This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
THE Australian Property Institute (API) is providing support to Landmark White (LMW), whilst the firm assesses the financial impact from the recent theft and disclosure of documents.
Last week LMW voluntarily requested the ASX suspend trading in its securities because it was unable to ascertain when some lenders will reinstate the firm on their valuation panel.
LMW said the suspension has impacted the company’s revenues, profitability and cashflows.
The suspensions came after a secondary incident on May 30 relating to the publication of a number of documents on online publishing platform SCRIBD.
“The nature of these documents together with the small number of non-valuation documents loaded to SCRIBD clearly indicate that this is not a cyber-attack on LMW but rather the deliberate acts of a person known to LMW. LMW suspects that this person has taken the documents from LMW via a manual process and is attempting to damage LMW’s brand and reputation. There is absolutely no indication that the person is attempting to derive personal gain from the disclosure,” LMW said in a statement.
Yesterday API CEO Amelia Hodge said the perpetrators must be brought to justice and in the case of LMW, the criminal acts have impacted many innocent, loyal and hardworking staff.
“Cybercrime is one of the major tech crimes of our time and perpetrators must be brought to justice and handed the harshest of penalties.
“Our banking clients have mobilised large teams of experts to manage the identification of, and notification to, potentially affected customers and their own executive and boards. Our individual API member firms have also invested a significant amount of organisational, financial and personal resources into increased analysis, testing and certification of data security systems,” she added.
“In the case of LMW, the acts of a criminal have impacted many innocent, loyal, hardworking LMW families and their communities. The API will continue to provide support to LMW, as it has since advised of the first incident in February,” Hodge said. “The API will also continue to work closely in support of all of its members and key stakeholders across the property and banking sectors, customers and regulators. The API has an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) through Converge International which is also available to all API members. The service offers access to a range of counsellors.”
