Full Profile
Stefanie is a Partner specialising in cyber incident response, data protection, IT liability, D&O and professional insurance lines.
She regularly works on domestic and international cyber claims involving data breaches, regulatory investigations, mandatory notification laws, recovery actions and incident response.
She has acted as breach coach, privacy counsel and coverage counsel in a range of incidents including high profile data breaches, denial of service attacks, ransomware and business email compromise and fraud incidents. She also regularly advises clients in relation to their privacy compliance and cyber incident readiness and resilience.
More broadly, her practice involves defending litigated and non-litigated claims in complex multi- party financial and D&O disputes. She also acts for a range of professionals, financial services firms, construction professionals and technology companies in multi-million dollar disputes and regularly advises insurers on complex coverage issues.
She has appeared in the Federal Court, the District and Supreme Courts of Queensland and the Queensland Civil & Administrative Tribunal.
Stefanie regularly presents at cyber security conferences and for industry partners including AUSCERT, AILA and AWSN.
Experience
- Data protection: Advising a professional services firm in relation to its mandatory data breach notification and wider privacy obligations following unauthorised access to client records on cloud based practice management software.
- Cyber coverage and breach response: Advising insurers and coordinating breach response in relation to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks brought against an Australian public entities.
- Cyber coverage and breach response: Advising an insurer in relation to a significant network interruption claim arising from an attack on a revenue generating system operated by an Australian public entity.
- Policy construction: Advising an international insurer in relation to its draft cyber policy wording including proposed re-drafting of provisions relating to waiver of remedies under Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth).
- Recovery action: Prosecuting a subrogated recovery action including both indemnified and unindemnified losses on behalf of an insurer which included instituting Supreme Court of Queensland proceedings against a tile adhesive manufacturer in relation to defective tiling works at a major shopping centre.
- Recovery action: Advising on prospects of pursuing a subrogated recovery action against an engineering firm in respect of rectification costs arising from defective design of concrete sunhoods in a multi-story residential complex.
- Complex coverage advice: Advising on coverage in relation to a claim against a head contractor under the mitigation and rectification extension of a D&C professional indemnity policy.
- Complex coverage advice: Advising on coverage under a D&C professional indemnity policy in relation to a claim against a head contractor in respect of approximately 40 design and construction defects.
- Complex litigation: Defending a multi-million dollar claim against valuers by a financial institution in relation to valuations of englobo rural land for development in the Supreme Court of Queensland.
- Complex litigation: Defending an engineering firm in multi-party litigation in the Federal Court of Australia arising from an alleged negligent design and defective works for a multi-story unit complex.
- Complex litigation: Defending the interests of an engineering firm at a coronial inquest and defending concurrent proceedings brought against it the Supreme Court of Queensland arising from alleged negligent certification of privacy screens for a large, multi-story complex.
- Complex litigation: Defending a national financial advisory firm in an AUD 1.5 million Supreme Court of Queensland claim concerning alleged negligent financial advice in respect of options trading.
