Names, bank account details, pays, personal information of nearly 80,000 public sector workers accessed in cyber attack

Nearly 80,000 public sector workers in South Australia “should assume” their personal information has been accessed in a recent cyber attack, the state’s Treasurer says.

The South Australian government announced on Friday that the attack on its payroll software, Frontier, left between 38,000 and 80,000 workers vulnerable.

The data includes names, dates of birth, tax file numbers, home addresses, bank account details, remuneration and superannuation contributions.

State Treasurer Rob Lucas today confirmed the number of affected employees was close to 80,000.

“I am advised all public sector employees, except for Department of Education staff who are on a different payroll system, should assume that their personal information has been accessed during Frontier Software’s cyber attack,” Mr Lucas said.

In a statement, Mr Lucas said the government had taken several actions to “address all potential areas of exposure”.

Those actions include working with the tax office to add additional security measures, notifying banks to add safeguards for employees’ bank accounts, alerting the public sector superannuation scheme and notifying the state government’s salary sacrifice provider.

Controls were also being added by the payroll service to validate changes made or requested to employees’ personal details.

The state government also notified the state’s Privacy Committee, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the Australian Federal Police about the cyber attack.

Government employees were last week advised to take “precautionary action” such as contacting their financial institutions and changing their passwords.

Public Service Association of SA general secretary Nev Kitchin said the organisation expected the government “to do everything possible to minimise the effects of this security breach”.

“We expect the state government to take all possible steps to review its cyber security measures in order to prevent such an event in the future,” Mr Kitchin said.