Data breach at Australian National University. Staffs and Students Impacted.

Disclosures were disclosed by The Vice-Chancellor or Australian National University that a data breach occurred two weeks ago and has compromised the personal data of its staff and students.

Upon discovery, ANC conducted a forensic investigation and found out that an unauthorized third-party gained access to the Internal systems of the university in late 2018.

"We believe there was unauthorized access to significant amounts of per staff, student and visitor data extending back 19 years," said the Vice Chancellor of ANC, Brian Schmidt. ANC is working strongly with Australian government security agencies and industry security partners to conduct extensive cyber forensics in the investigation to determine the nature and source of the incident. In order to prevent such incidents from happening in the future, the University has taken several security measures to enhance its IT security.

CISO will be issuing advice on how to betterment the protection of our systems and they strongly recommended everyone to implement those precautionary measures, added Schmidt.

"As you know, this is not the first time we have been targeted. Following the incident reported last year, we undertook a range of upgrades to our systems to better protect our dat. Had it not been for those upgrades, we would not have detected this incident," said Schmidt.

The compromised systems are confirmed to contain personal information of students, staffs and including names, date of birth, email addresses, tax file numbers, bank account details, student academic records, addresses, phone numbers, contact details, employee payroll information, passport details etc.

It is confirmed that systems that hold credit card details, travel information, police checks, vehicle registration numbers, medical records, workers compensation and performance records have not been affected. The VC further confirmed that no evidence's were detected regarding any compromise in research works. Schmidt concluded, " I assure you we are taking this incident extremely seriously and we are doing all we can to improve the digital safety of our community. We are all affected by this and it is important we look after one another as our community comes to terms with the impact of this breach".