Australian Information Security Incident Reported: March 11 2020

Australian Data Breach March 2020: Melbourne TAFE data breach exposes 55k student, staff files

Sensitive financial, health data accessed.

Source: Melbourne TAFE data breach exposes 55k student, staff files | iTnews
Source: 55,000 files accessed in Melbourne Polytechnic data breach |ARN
More reports from: iTnews.

Melbourne Polytechnic has revealed it suffered a data breach in late 2018, with 55,000 files containing email addresses, passwords and financial and health information being accessed.

It was determined that the breach affected people including those who worked or studied at Melbourne Polytechnic before September 2018.

Following the investigation, the institution said Victoria Police charged an individual and the matter is now before the courts.

“Detectives from Darebin Crime Investigation unit have charged a man following an investigation into an alleged data breach,” Victoria Police told ARN in a statement. “It is alleged the man gained unauthorised access to data from two higher education institutions between August and December 2018, and was also in possession of other unauthorised data.

“The 34-year-old Heidelberg Heights man was arrested on 11 October and charged with 12 offences, including unauthorised access with the intention to commit a serious offence, unauthorised access to restricted data, supplying identification information to commit an indictable offence and possession of identification with the intention to commit an indictable offence,” Victoria Police added