Western Australia University (WAU) has acknowledged being hit by a data breach, in which the private data of current and former students was accessed.

Investigation into the nature of a “random assault” on the university’s Callista student information system is still in progress, and the institution has notified students and alumni of the incident

Many Australian education institutions, including Monash University and Edith Cowan University, employ Callista.

The police were alerted, and financial information was not obtained; rather, information that could be used to create identity theft or even extortion was taken.

WA police have enlisted the help of the special digital forensics squad after the data breach at the University of Western Australia.

Impacted indivduals were alerted by Vice-Chancellor Professor Amit Chakma late last week

Professor Chakma assured that the Callista database, which was compromised, contains only current and former students’ course and unit grades as well as their names, student IDs, and photographs. Credit card numbers, tax file numbers, bank records, and medical records, in contrast, are not part of Callista’s data.

The UWA community is being affected by this incident and a spoksperson apologised sincerely.

He also wanted to assure them that a thorough investigation would be conducted to prevent a similar incident from occurring again.

Bob Hawke, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, Melanie Perkins, Michaelia Cash, Madeleine King, former WA Governor and Labor leader Kim Beazley, and former Indonesian Vice President Boediono are among the university’s notable alumni. Canva co-founder Perkins is among them.

Tony D’Angelo, Vice President, Public Sector at Lookout told Tech Business News universities are a prime target for cyber-criminals because of the large amount of sensitive data they handle, process and store, such as personally identifiable information (PII) of staff, students and families.

“They’ve always faced data protection and cyber-security challenges because of their de-centralised security, with different departments and colleges operating with their own protection practices and IT teams, and often engaging their own third-party providers.”

“As digital learning continues to become the norm, higher education institutions need cybersecurity that works regardless of where data is moving. With consistent, end-to-end protection, universities can have full control over their infrastructure.” said D’Angelo

A staff member’s username and password was ‘hacked’ and used to access information held by a third-party provider on 10 July 2022 at Deakin University and information was also accessed via the university’s software.

Deakin said that the data was accessed via software the university uses, and a staff member’s username and password were ‘hacked’ and used by an unauthorised person to access information held by a third-party service on July 10, 2022..

Deakins data breach exposed the names, dates of birth, and student numbers of 46,980 current and former students.

Western Australia University is treating the incident seriously