The Australian Government is investigating a data breach affecting HWL Ebsworth, one of the nation’s leading commercial law firms, to establish whether any Tasmanian information has been compromised.
State Science and Technology Minister, Madeleine Ogilvie said federal authorities had contacted the Tasmanian Government to notify them of the attack, which may include state information.
“While this may take some time considering the volume of data involved – we are taking swift action and will keep the Tasmanian community informed with further developments,” she said.
Ogilvie said the state government was one of HWL Ebsworth’s clients and was advised of the breach on May 2.
In May, the Australian Financial Review reported that hackers claimed to have obtained employee IDs, financial data, accounting data and client documents.
The investigation comes months after the state government was caught up in a separate data breach, which involved a third-party file transfer service being hacked.