The results of the second full quarter of Australia’s Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme, has again ranked the Education sector as fourth in the number of data breach notifications between 1 July and 30 September.
Published by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), the report captures statistical information based on notifications received by OAIC under the NDB every quarter to assist the public to understand the operation of the scheme.
Captured notifications received by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) under the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme between 1 July 2018 and 30 September 2018 (data breaches).
The report goes into detail breaking down the types of data breaches by sector, with Education trailing the Health Sector, Finance and Legal, Accounting and Management in incidents, with a total of 16 reported for the quarter.
70% of incidents in the Education sector, were cyber incidents… 
Of those 16 incidents reported to the OAIC, over 70% for the Education sector were cyber incidents. The information collected included contact information, financial details, identity and health information as well as other sensitive information.
Recently a school in Victoria suffered a data breach which resulted in students’ conditions, such as Asperger’s, Autism and ADHD and even included medication students were on, being published online. Although the majority of data breaches reported involved ‘contact information’, such as individual’s home address, phone and email, schools are in a position where they must hold on to much more information than just ‘contact information’ and this makes risk mitigation even more integral for them.
CyberHound is aware of the issues and challenges Schools face in this regard, and have commissioned global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright to develop a suite of education-specific data breach resources. These include simple checklists and user-friendly guides for schools to help prevent, and prepare for, a data breach.
A key element of these resources is the Privacy Compliance Manual for Schools which you can Download for Free.
