Nagle Catholic College suffered from a cyber attack

Nagle Catholic College (NCC) in Geraldton, Australia, has suffered from one highly sophisticated cyber attack. The Catholic school principal in Western Australia's Mid West region has warned the parents that their bank details as well as signatures might were stolen, after the educational institution has been targeted in a 4-day cyber attack.

According to a letter sent to the parents, Rob Crothers (the principal of Nagle Catholic College) expressed "deep regret" for this data breach, which as per him was "highly sophisticated". Crothers said other education institutions were also targeted in this "widespread cyber security attack" that started on June 11, 2019. He told the ABC that this cyber attack started when someone has mistakenly opened malicious link in the phishing email that was sent to the NCC.

The compromised information contains parents' bank account information, credit card information, as well as scanned signatures when the parents paid the school fees.

Crothers said that "parents who may have provided information relating to accounts from which to take fee payments or to make payments to the school could have been compromised if they were sent by email format. There's quite a large amount of data. We're still doing discovery on that".

NCC reported the data breach incident to the Catholic Education Western Australia (CEWA) as well as to the Australian Information Commissioner's Office.

The educational institution requested all the parents to stay vigilant as well as review the statements of bank account for any kind of suspicious activity. Further, Crothers added that a security firm was hired by the organisation and the NCC was committed to improve the cyber security.

He said that "in the long term, what we need to do is look at developing different processes for the handling of this information and provide parents with a different format so they can communicate the same information and not be susceptible through any future email attacks or hacks".

A CEWA spokesperson said that they have systems as well as measures in place, so as to monitor and then respond to the cyber security incidents. The CEWA spokesperson added that they are continuing working closely with the cybersecurity experts in order to mitigate as well as address a possible breach. The CEWA spokesperson added that "in instances where a breach may have occurred, CEWA follows a stringent reporting process including notification to those who may be affected".

» SPAMfighter News - 7/10/2019