No data is believed to have been accessed during a security incident described as a “hacking attempt” against the Maitland office of the NSW Department of Industry’s resources and energy division.
The Daily Telegraph today revealed details of the incident that took place late last year.
“In December of last year our IT security systems noticed a marked increase in virus/security activity at our Maitland office,” a spokesperson for the Division of Resources and Energy told Computerworld.
“The attacks were identified by specialist software we have in place to detect breaches to our firewalls. Given the increased levels of activity we took further steps to ensure that our systems were protected.”
“We do not believe that the attacks penetrated our systems or any data was accessed at this time,” the spokesperson said.
Late last year systems at the Bureau of Meteorology were allegedly compromised during a “major cyber attack”.
In response, independent Senator Nick Xenophon has pushed for a federal inquiry into “adequacy of security for government and citizen data held, or transmitted, by governments, commercial entities, non-government organisations (NGOs) or citizens”.
A motion to establish such an inquiry, to be conducted by the Senate’s Environment and Communications References Committee, has been postponed until tomorrow.