Foxtel’s cable news channel Sky News Australia has become the latest media company to suffer a cybersecurity incident, with personal identification details of staff stolen following a major hack of a third-party provider.
Staff at the Rupert Murdoch-owned news channel were told that their personal information may have been caught in the cybersecurity breach at payroll provider Frontier Software late last year.
Staff at Sky News were informed last week about the breach of their personal details.Credit:Bloomberg
A letter, seen by this masthead, apologised for the breach, but it is unclear how many employees were affected.
“While we have received no reports from Frontier that any of this information has been published online or any other unwanted or harmful behaviour, we think it is important to let you know about this so that you can take steps to protect this information and we would like to apologise to you that this may have happened,” the letter said. Sky News was approached for comment but did not respond before deadline.
The letters were sent weeks after Frontier Software informed Nine Entertainment Co, owner of this masthead, that about 500 current and former employees had their personal payroll details stolen.
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Frontier initially told Nine Radio, which runs 2GB, 3AW and 4BC, that no personal information of its employees had been released, but changed its view after further analysis. The data accessed included full names, home and email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, tax file numbers, salaries, payroll IDs and superannuation fund details.
Sky News said the details could include full names and bank account numbers. Sky News no longer uses Frontier as its payroll provider.
Research from McGrath Nicol late last year showed that ransomware attacks are becoming a big problem for Australian executives, with 35 per cent of companies having suffered a ransomware attack and 83 per cent of those businesses paying a ransom.
