WELLINGTON (Reuters) – The New Zealand Reserve Bank said on Sunday it was responding urgently to a breach of one of its data systems.
A third-party file-sharing service used by the central bank to share and store some sensitive information was illegally accessed, the bank said in a statement.
RBNZ Governor Adrian Orr said the violation was limited, but added that it would take time to understand the full implications of the violation.
“The nature and extent of the information that was potentially accessed is still being determined, but may include some commercially and personally sensitive information,” Orr said in a statement.
In August, the New Zealand stock exchange operator was hit by cyber attacks. InPhySec, an independent cyber security firm tasked with reviewing cyber attacks, said the volume, sophistication and persistence of the attacks were unprecedented for New Zealand.
In a November 2019 financial stability report, RBNZ warned that the frequency and severity of cybersecurity incidents were increasing in New Zealand.
In February last year, the bank said in a report that the expected cost of cyber incidents for the banking and insurance industry was between NZD 80 million (USD 58 million) and NZD 140 million annually.
“More extreme events have a low probability, but are still plausible,” the bank said in the report.
($ 1 = $ 1.3808 in New Zealand)
Reporting by Praveen Menon in Wellington and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Mountainous of William Mallard