Service NSW has today disclosed the scope of the effect that resulted from an earlier breach, where 47 staff email accounts were compromised. The department revealed that about 738GB of data belonging to 186,000 people have been breached, which is set in 3.8 million documents. Service NSW is now informing all the people affected in this incident.
Email Breach Affecting 186,000 People Disclosed
Service NSW is a general services wing of NSW government, where citizens can pay fines, register births/deaths, license issuance etc is done. The one-stop-shop agency has recorded an email data breach earlier this year, where about 47 email accounts of its staff were hijacked through a phishing attack, thereby breaching all of their content.
The department has now unveiled the exact numbers that were affected – saying that about 738GB worth of data in 3.8 million documents belonging to 186,000 people were breached. While the auditor general of NSW and police are investigating the incident, Service NSW said it has accelerated the cybersecurity plans and modernized the legacy business processes to safeguard customer data.
While it assured that Service NSW’s databases and individual MyServiceNSW accounts were safe from the breach, it apologized for letting customer data leak in this way. Service NSW’s CEO, Damon Rees said they’re investigating the breach for four months, where “the rigorous first step surfaced about 500,000 documents which referenced personal information.”
He revealed that breached information contained about scans, transaction records, forms and handwritten notes of 186,000 people. He also said that their team has manually analysed over tens of thousands of records to endure giving useful information to their support teams, thereby to customers.
Service NSW announced that it has partnered with IDCare for cyber support, and is sending personalized letters to all those 186,000 people affected through registered posts. The agency plans to complete this process by the end of this year and provides support to all of them.
Other Trending News:- News
