Nine Radio has today issued advice of a cyber-attack experienced by Frontier, our payroll software provider, relating to some employees from May 2016.

External payroll software provider, Frontier, has notified Nine Radio of the breach.  Those employees who are still engaged by Nine Radio have been notified, along with best steps to protect their personal data.

Former employees can also contact Nine through the email address privacy@nine.com.au

Correspondence from Frontier Software Data Breach:

Earlier this week Nine Radio Pty Ltd (Nine) became aware that personal information from the month of May 2016 relating to 498 current and former employees, may have been accessed as a result of a cyber-attack against an external payroll software provider, Frontier Software Pty Ltd (Frontier). 

The cyber-attack which occurred on November 13 2021, resulted in a file containing these current and former employees’ personal information from that period being exported from Frontier. Prior to this week Frontier had provided us with advice that no personal information of our employees had been released from their business. The updated advice from Frontier this week is a result of the many weeks of forensic work done by Frontier. The information which was accessed through the cyber-attack includes full names, home addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, tax file numbers, salaries, payroll ID, and superannuation fund details. 

Frontier has confirmed to Nine that the information has now been deleted by the entity responsible for the cyber-attack and we are not aware of any misuse of the information which was accessed from Frontier. However, impacted staff are asked to please consider whether you should take any of the steps recommended by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/databreaches/respond-to-a-data-breach-notification), including: 

• Changing your passwords (particularly any that may be relevant to your tax file number or superannuation accounts); 

• Monitoring accounts for any unusual transactions; 

• Contacting the Australian Taxation Office about any unusual activity relating to your tax file number; and 

• Contacting your superfund to flag any suspicious activity. 

You should also stay alert to any suspicious emails or other scam online activity. 

Further support from Nine

Nine has engaged ID Care, which can provide free expert and independent support to the current and former employees impacted by this incident. You can contact ID Care at https://www.idcare.org/contact/get-help and provide referral code ID-CNG22. 

They can provide you with a case manager for practical digital identity recovery and response as well as counselling support. 

Nine has contacted the ATO to flag the affected tax file numbers for any suspicious activity. 

Nine is also continuing to monitor for suspicious activity including monitoring the dark web to identify if any of the personal information is being made available. 

If you have any questions about this, please contact us by email to privacy@nine.com.au. We will have colleagues from our People and Culture team ready to speak to affected people. Some of the affected individuals are former employees of Nine for whom Nine no longer has contact details. If you know any former colleagues from May 2016 please ask them to contact Nine at privacy@nine.com.au to confirm if they were affected by this incident.