Notification of Potential Data Breach
Statement from Chris Carroll, CEO City of Port Phillip
The City of Port Phillip is committed to being transparent around incidents that may affect you and your data. As such, it is appropriate to let you know of an incident that occurred recently on our online customer portal, My Port Phillip.
On 9 December, Council become aware that 33 new users to the portal may have been able to view requests other than their own. This occurred after a system upgrade that took place on 7 December and the correct access was restored immediately upon this being identified.
This is not the result of hacking and there have been no updates or deletions made to anybody’s personal data. There is a small possibility, however, that your name, address, phone number and/or email address (if supplied when logging a request) may have been viewed by one of these 33 people.
There is no evidence to suggest users with incorrect access performed any malicious or exploratory activities, but out of an abundance of caution we are notifying customers that currently have an active request open with Council.
We’re sorry and disappointed to share this news. Council regards the protection of personal information to be of great importance and we make every effort to safeguard information under our control.
Council adopts best industry security practices in protecting customer data. We have established multi-factor authentication, secure passwords, firewalls, end point protection and encryption when data is accessed, handled, transmitted, hosted or stored.
The following link to the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner (OVIC) website provides a useful resource explaining what a data breach is and how you can reduce the risk of suffering harm because of a breach, including what actions you can take Data breaches and you - Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner (ovic.vic.gov.au)
Should you have any questions regarding this notification, or if you would like more information, please do not hesitate to contact Council’s Privacy Officer via email at Help.DataIncident@portphillip.vic.gov.au.
Please note that under the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014, anyone who is not satisfied with how Council has endeavoured to resolve the situation is entitled to make a complaint to the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner. The contact details for the Office are as follows:
Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner
Privacy and Data Protection
PO Box 24274
MELBOURNE VIC 3001
Telephone: 1300 006 842
Additional information is available on the Commissioner’s website.
We apologise again for this regrettable incident and for any concern it may inevitably cause you.