Australia’s largest telecommunications company Telstra Corp Ltd disclosed a data breach through a third-party supplier, exposing employee data dating back to 2017.
The company pointed out that its systems have not been breached and that the security breach impacted a third-party supplier that previously provided a now-obsolete Telstra employee rewards program.
The data breach impacted a third-party platform called Work Life NAB, which is no longer live, that was supplied by Pegasus Group Australia (a subsidiary of MyRewards International Ltd.) to several other organizations.
Telstra has 18.8 million customer accounts which is equivalent to three-quarters of Australia’s population.
Narelle Devine, the company’s chief information security officer for the Asia Pacific region, stated that no customer account information was stored on the third-party platform. The security breach also impacted other companies.
The data which was leaked online from 2017 includes the first and last names and email addresses used to sign up for the employee rewards program.
According to the post published by Reuters, who had access to internal staff email sent by Telstra, the number of impacted current and former employees is 30,000.
The company is still investigating the incident and is supporting the third party to determine how the security breach happened and its extent.
Telstra’s data breach disclosure comes two weeks after the company’s main rival Optus was hit by a massive cyberattack.
Image Credits : CRN Australia
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