New South Wales government staffer arrested for stealing substantial government data

The government of New South Wales in Australia said a Treasury staff member has been arrested for stealing substantial amounts of documents containing confidential commercial and financial information.

 

The NSW government announced on Tuesday that its internal security monitoring systems recently detected the unauthorised transfer of a substantial amount of documents to an external server. The documents contained confidential commercial and financial information pertaining to multiple government departments and projects.

 

After detecting the breach of confidential records, the Treasury department quickly notified NSW Police on Sunday, leading to the arrest of a Treasury staffer and the filing of criminal charges by Monday.

 

The New South Wales police said that after receiving a report that more than 5,600 sensitive government documents had been allegedly accessed and downloaded by a staff member, its cybercrime squad quickly launched an investigation under Strike Force Civic and arrested a 45-year-old Treasury staffer from Sydney on Monday afternoon.

 

On Tuesday evening, the cybercrime squad obtained a warrant to search the staffer’s home and seized a hard drive and other electronic devices that reportedly contained the exfiltrated data. "Police believe all the alleged stolen data has been located and secured and there was no external compromise to the agency’s system," NSW Police said. The staffer was granted conditional bail to face Downing Centre Local Court on Wednesday.

 

The staffer, Jagan Ganti Venkata Satya, told The Sydney Morning Herald that he hadn’t "done anything corrupt or wrong or sold anything, anything like that." The Treasury has suspended him without pay.

 

NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey told the media during a press conference that Satya transferred the confidential commercial and financial documents from the Treasury’s systems to an external hard drive between April 10 and April 14. The breach was identified on April 17 and reported to the Police on April 19.

 

According to local media reports, Satya was employed with the NSW government’s Treasury department for over three years as a senior associate in the major projects division. Mookhey said the division dealt with significant amounts of transactions and negotiations with the private sector, and all agencies and departments of NSW government have been warned about the cyber incident.

 

"While the police are continuing their investigation, they believe all the alleged stolen data has been located, is now secure, and there was no external compromise to the agency’s system. I thank NSW Police and Cyber Security NSW for their rapid actions since Sunday," he added.