Service NSW, an Australian government customer related service agency, has made it official that the hack that took place on its database in April this year has hacked information related to 186,000 customers.
“After analyzing over 3.8 million documents stored (738GB appx) on the database, a detailed probe has revealed the above-stated details in a press statement released this afternoon. Also, the government information office for New South Wales has disclosed that details of its 47 employees were accessed by hackers in the attack”, said Damon Rees, the CEO of Service NSW.
Mr. Rees subjected the cyber attack as highly sophisticated in which documents, mostly handwritten and related to forms, scans and records of transaction applications were hacked and accessed.
The focus of Service NSW will be to offer the best support to the impacted 186,000 customers and staff who have been identified in the investigation launched by forensic experts added Damon.
All those who have been impacted will be notified about the incident via email with the notification procedure expected to be completed by December 2020.
Damon Rees stated that the Cybersecurity measures deployed by the agency will be on par with the guidelines issued at the international level.
Note 1- Details on how data was accessed by the hackers are yet to be revealed. But some media publications reported that the cyber incident took place because of a phishing campaign launched on the employees working for Service New South Wales.
Note 2- Recently, the government of Australia has granted $240 million to improve the security posture of all government agencies safeguarding customer information and Service NSW is one such agency to benefit from that funding.
