Service NSW, the New South Wales government's one-stop shop for service delivery, in April 2020 experienced a cyber attack[1] that compromised the information of 186,000 customers.
Following a four-month investigation that began in April, Service NSW said it identified that 738GB of data, which comprised of 3.8 million documents[2], was stolen from 47 staff email accounts.
Service NSW assured, however, there was no evidence that individual MyService NSW account data or Service NSW databases were compromised during the attack.
"This rigorous first step surfaced about 500,000 documents which referenced personal information," Service NSW CEO Damon Rees said in September. "The data is made up of documents such as handwritten notes and forms, scans, and records of transaction applications."
In delivering its 2020-21 Budget on Tuesday, the government revealed the legal and investigative cost it is expected to incur from the attack.
"In April 2020, Service NSW alerted police and authorities to a cyber attack that has potentially compromised customer information," the Budget documents[3] [PDF] revealed. "Investigations into this matter are still ongoing however, Service NSW is expected to incur legal and investigation costs of approximately AU$7 million."
Elsewhere in the state's 2020-21 Budget, the government largely expanded on a handful of initiatives that have already launched and focused also on how to pull the state out of its AU$16 billion deficit.
A big feature of its Budget was the Digital Restart Fund (DRF), which will be given AU$1.2 billion in capital and AU$400 million in recurrent funding.
"Key to delivering quality government services is ensuring that those services are fit-for-purpose and meet the needs of the community. In this Budget, the government is pursuing an ambitious transformation agenda driven by digitisation," the Budget papers[4] stated.
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