Telstra has revealed almost 30,000 of its present and past employees have had their data leaked and uploaded to the same forum where the Optus breach was shared last week.
The data, which was obtained by an unauthorised third party, includes names and email addresses.
While Optus is still investigating the source of the attack, Telstra has confirmed that the data leak came from an employee who had “inappropriate access” to the company’s systems.
“We take the security of our employees’ data extremely seriously and we’re very sorry that this has happened,” a Telstra spokesperson said.
“We’re contacting all affected employees to let them know what has happened and what we’re doing to protect them.”
“There is no Telstra data breach, it is not related to our systems or networks.”
“The data, which contains staff names and email addresses, is from 2017. It’s six years old.”
Alex Badenoch, group executive for transformation, communications and people at Telstra, said on Saturday the data was from a third party that had provided a rewards program for Telstra staff.
A total of 30,000 names were leaked, and 12,800 of those were still employed by Telstra.
