Optus hack fells CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin’s reputation: $4million mansion Bowral

It’s been a spectacular fall from grace for Optus boss Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, whose golden run and lavish lifestyle had made her a much-admired rising star of corporate Australia. 

However, last week’s massive security breach that saw hackers steal the sensitive personal data of 10 million Optus customers and the telco’s widely condemned response, has brought Ms Romarin crashing back to Earth and may cost her job.

The 45-year-old’s rapid rise to become Optus boss, a role she claimed in April 2020, have seen her wheel and deal in some very lavish properties.  

In March it was reported Ms Rosmarin and her husband Rodney Rosmarin, who is a CBA executive, had sold their historic mansion Rose Manor in the picturesque NSW southern highlands town of Bowral for $4million. 

Also during that month they also spent $376,000 adding a pool and spa to their $15million harbourside mansion in the exclusive eastern Sydney suburb of Vaucluse.

Ms Rosmarin had enjoyed glowing press since taking the top job at Optus, with a number of outlets reporting how she celebrated her first day on the job by having a humble takeaway meal at home with her family.

She also received good publicity donating a month’s salary to help those affected by Covid and to further medical research. 

Her Optus salary has not been disclosed but she was reported to be on a $5.15 million salary when she was at CBA and had received an extra $1million as a termination payout.

Ms Rosmarin was also front and centre when Optus staged the coup of securing the services of former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian. 

Ms Berejiklian very much presented herself as a double act with Ms Rosmarin, who is her boss, during a widely televised Sky News interview in August.

‘I look forward to working with Kelly and the Executive Team of Optus who are providing inspiring and innovative leadership in the telco sector,’ Ms Berejiklian said after joining the telco in February. 

However,  Ms Berejiklian has not been sighted since Optus suffered the hacking disaster, which leading technology futurist Shara Evans described as ‘an extinction-level event’.

‘This is a public relations fiasco,’ Ms Evans told Daily Mail Australia recently.

‘I think the burning question is: why were people not pro-actively notified?’ she said.

‘This should have been told to everybody involved as soon as they realised “Oh my God, this involves birthdates, driver’s licences – all kinds of other information”.’ 

On Saturday Optus made a grovelling apology, taking out full-page newspaper ads to say they were ‘deeply sorry for the data breach’

‘Our priority is preventing harm to customers,’ Optus wrote in its apology.

‘We are here to assist and support you through any personal concern that you may be feeling.

As the public face of Optus, Ms Rosmarin has copped the anger that is not just flowing from the general public but also government ministers who are lining up to criticise the telco for the breach but also for its flailing response. 

The need to appease that anger has led to speculation about how long Ms Rosmarin will hold onto her job. 

‘In these situations, a corporation needs a sacrificial lamb of sorts, which is usually the CEO,’ an unnamed crisis management specialist told The Sydney Morning Herald.

‘At this point I can’t see how she is going to hang on to that job in the long term.

‘There are around 10 million customers feeling very angry, a highly critical government, mainstream media and social media on the attack … it’s not looking good.’

Slater and Gordon Lawyers are investigating whether to launch a class action lawsuit against Optus on behalf of former and current customers

Ms Rosmarin last week fronted up to hostile media and public receptions a number of times last week.

‘Well, look, I think most customers understand that we are not the villains and that we have not done anything deliberate to put any of our customers at risk,’ she pleaded on ABC Radio’s AM program on Tuesday.

On Sunday morning federal ministers lined up to give Optus a drubbing.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said he was yet to get an explanation why Optus hoarded sensitive personal information of people even after they left the telco.

The data stolen by the hacker came from 10million current or former Optus customers and dated back to 2017.

Cyber Security and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said that Optus had not done enough to alert those most at risk, particularly the 10,200 people who had their details leaked online by the hacker.

‘Optus has advised it has told those people – an email is simply not sufficient under these circumstances,’ Ms O’Neil told a media conference.

‘We are going to need to go through a process of directly speaking to those 10,200 individuals.

‘Optus needs to take up the mantle here to directly ensure people are aware when they are directly at risk, as those people are.’

She said Optus had failed to provide the government with information on who and how many were at risk.

‘We would like Optus to be transparent about the numbers of people who have had specific identity documents compromised and that information has not yet been provided.’

The criticism was echoed by Services Minister Bill Shorten who said his department had written to Optus on 27 September asking for details on all those whose had Medicare numbers or other Centrelink information stolen, but as yet had no reply.

‘It’s been 11 days since the breach,’ he said.

‘It is most peculiar that we still can’t identify who has had their Medicare information number to be able to get their information.

‘We need this not tomorrow or the next day, we really needed it days ago.’

Ms O’Neill previously called the Optus breach a ‘basic hack’, something Ms Rosmarin denied saying the data had been encrypted and protected by ‘multiple firewalls’. 

Ms Rosmarin has described herself as ‘very clam in a crisis’ – and she certainly has one on her hands right now. 

She joined Optus in March 2019 in the newly created position of deputy CEO, having served various senior roles since 2004 at the Commonwealth Bank. 

Her stellar rise saw her named in the Top 25 Women in Asia Pacific Finance, the Top 10 Businesswomen in Australian and 50 Most Powerful Women in Australian Business. 

Covid immediately curtailed Ms Rosmarin’s ability to physically visit Optus’s network of national offices and she found herself working from her Vaucluse home. 

By August 2020, Bayer Rosmarin was still upbeat when she told The Weekend Australian that Optus ‘absolutely could be No 1 in mobile share over time’.

‘I’d love to see it happen because we are so focused on customers that they choose us and they choose to stay with us,’ she said. 

Nine months after her appointment Ms Rosmarin told Nine newspapers she believed the telco industry was lacking new ideas in the fight to make profits.

‘Despite being so fundamental and despite it being something that people actually love and use every day – it’s a sector that globally is struggling for profitability,’ she said. 

Under Bayer Rosmarin, Optus bought low-cost carrier Amaysim, which was viewed positively by the share market, and won approval from customers by freezing prices during the pandemic.

There have been other successes. 

Optus Sport has held the rights to the English Premier League since 2016 and renewed that deal as the competition’s exclusive local broadcaster in late 2021 for six more years.

Bayer Rosmarin is a Manchester United fan and former Football Federation of Australia board member and the company is confident it will never experience another broadcasting disaster like the 2018 World Cup. 

The Singtel-owned provider had also been close to securing a broadcasting rights deal with Rugby Australia in 2020 before the pandemic hit.  

If the current data breach had happened in Europe the company responsible would face potential fines worth hundreds of millions of dollars but Bayer Rosmarin did not back tougher penalties here.

‘Look, honestly I’m not sure what penalties benefit anybody,’ she told AM. 

‘I think what I can say is Optus is doing absolutely everything possible to be transparent, to be on the front foot. 

‘We’re communicating to every customer individually about which specific fields of theirs may have been accessed and we’re working through that.’Ms 

Rosmarin said Optus was working closely with the Australian Cyber Security Centre and Australian Federal Police to identify the culprits.

‘We definitely know that this is the work of some bad actors and really they are the villains in this story,’ she said. 

‘Now of course we will investigate thoroughly how it could happen, what went wrong, how we could have avoided it. 

‘And later on if something comes out of that indicates that Optus have made an error or done something bad we will of course take full accountability for that. 

‘But there’s a time and a place for that and we remain focused on doing everything we can to make sure no harm comes to customers as a result of this theft.’

Optus has announced it will be providing the most affected past and present customers with a free 12-month credit monitoring subscription to Equifax Protect. 

Asked if she had considered resigning, Bayer Rosmarin said: ‘At the moment all we’re focused on is protecting our customers, so someone has to be accountable for doing that and that’s exactly what I’m focused on.’