The New South Wales government has set up a dedicated cyber and privacy resilience group as part of its vow to keep customer data safe.
The formation of a so-called, dedicated taskforce that will focus on cyber resiliency and privacy risks across government was in response to the cyber attack the state government suffered earlier this year[1], according to NSW Department of Customer Service Secretary Emma Hogan, who is the chair of the new group.
The breach resulted in 73GB of data[2], which comprised of 3.8 million documents, being stolen from staff email accounts. The breach impacted 186,000 customers.
"Since the breach was discovered in April, we've invested heavily in both helping customers recover and also in understanding what went wrong, how a hacker was able to access so much customer data entrusted to us, and how we can make sure this never ever happens again," Hogan said, speaking at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Summit for Data Sharing on Tuesday morning.
See also: Unknown commercial entity blamed for NSW driver's licence data breach[3]
Alongside setting up the group, Hogan added that the state government is also working with the Information and Privacy Commission NSW to "embed privacy principles within the way we work".
"We've embraced the concept of 'privacy by design' to ensure that provisions and protections are built into our projects right from the start. Central to this is for agencies to undertake a privacy impact assessment for projects that might have privacy implications, together with a robust privacy reporting regime," she touted.
She continued, saying that the state government has started to "incorporate elements of privacy enhancing technologies", but admitted there was "obviously scope to do more".
"So whenever you apply for some of that AU$1.6 billion