Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications company, revealed a data breach via a third-party supplier.
The company stated that its systems were not compromised; rather, the security breach affected a third-party supplier who previously provided a now-defunct Telstra employee rewards programme.
The data breach affected a third-party platform called Work Life NAB, which is no longer available, and was provided to several other organisations by Pegasus Group Australia (a subsidiary of MyRewards International Ltd.).
Pegasus Group Australia, a subsidiary of MyRewards International Ltd, ran it.
The third-party platform did not store any customer account information, according to Narelle Devine, the company's chief information security officer for the Asia Pacific region. Other companies appear to have been affected by the security breach. Data from 2017 was leaked online, and it included names (first and last) and email addresses used to sign up for the employee rewards programme.
“Information obtained as a result of a data breach at a third-party supplier was posted on the internet. The supplier previously provided a now-obsolete Telstra employee rewards program.” reads the statement published by the company. “Critically, there was no breach of any Telstra systems, and no customer account information was stored on the third-party platform.”
According to Reuters, people who obtained access to internal Telstra staff email, 30,000 current and former employees have been affected. The company is still investigating the incident and assisting the third party in determining how and to what extent the security breach occurred.
Optus, Australia's second-largest company, recently confirmed that a security breach impacted nearly 2.1 million of its current and former customers.
