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An email service provider for the City of Casey Council has potentially put residents’ private data at risk after a cyber attack infiltrated the supplier’s systems.
WordFly, the City of Casey and Bunjil Place's email marketing service provider has been subject to a cyber attack, with the platform confirming it had suffered a "security incident" on Saturday, 16 July, which has compromised the contact details of thousands of residents.
Bunjil Place's monthly e-newsletter is distributed via WordFly, an email service platform that simplifies marketing processes via automatic distribution. A system outage alerted WordFly of the breach, but the platform was still unsure "what kind of security breach was made".
The exposure of the council's private data could result in hacking of servers to access more data, widespread phishing attempts, or the attempted spread of hacking viruses.
According to a WordFly spokesperson, the incident had been resolved after a week of investigation into the outage.
"We have resolved the root cause of the issue we had been troubleshooting since the weekend.
"We are targeting a return to service within 24-48 hours," the WordFly spokesperson said.
The council has put alternative measures in place to protect subscribers to their online networks.
According to Juanita Du Plessis, the City of Casey's manager of communications and marketing, the council has reached out to potentially affected subscribers about the security incident
"As a precautionary measure, we communicated with potentially affected subscribers to Bunjil Place about the incident.
"Until we hear more information from WordFly, Bunjil Place will continue to use an alternative provider to communicate with customers, residents and subscribers," Du Plessis said.
The council in Melbourne's south-east, also stated "it believes the security incident only impacted one of its newsletters, the Bunjil Place e-newsletter", to affirm its commitment to the safety and security of their customers.
"This incident has not affected any other e-newsletter sent by the City of Casey, which are sent via different email providers," the council said.
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