Treasurer Rob Lucas says government not ‘contemplating compensation’ for up to 80,000 payroll data hack victims

Compensation will not be paid to 80,000 employees who were hit by a major government data breach, after their personal details – including bank account information – were stolen.

Tens of thousands of public servants will not receive financial compensation from the state government for a major payroll data breach of personal information.

Unable to confirm whether the state government can still trust third-party company Frontier, Treasurer Rob Lucas said his party will not be “contemplating compensation” for 36,000 public servants and up to 80,000 total employees, who had personal details stolen from Frontier and held for ransom.

But Mr Lucas said that while not currently aware of any particular individuals who had lost large amounts of money, special cases would be taken into consideration for potential compensation should they arise.

“If and when they arrive, we’ll consider them at the time,” he said.

Now part of an Australian Federal Police investigation, names, addresses, dates of birth, tax file numbers and bank account information of up to 36,000 public servants and 80,000 government employees in total, from Mr Marshall down, were stolen.

Treasurer Rob Lucas said compensation will not be paid to the hacking victims. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Sources said Russian hackers likely broke through security walls about a month ago.

Both Premier Steven Marshall and Mr Lucas could not directly say whether Frontier will continue to be used to manage payroll data, or if the government would continue to have trust the company that has been responsible for managing pay information for 20 years.

Mr Marshall said he would would await the result of an investigation.

Mr Lucas said it was necessary to “establish the facts” before drawing conclusions.

He said the first priority was to “establish as much assistance as we can for potentially impacted employees” and then investigate how and why the beach occurred.

“Once we’ve established the facts we can make judgment calls about blame, attribution, consequences, but it’s too early for that at this particular stage.”

The Advertiser revealed on Friday evening that an offshore hacker demanded a ransom payment to return the payroll information.

The last major cyber attack on the state government came in April, where suspected Chinese hackers set off an alarm at the State Crisis Centre.

Mr Lucas said the April hack was not related to Frontier.

Mr Marshall said on Saturday there had been an “enormous” number of data hacks in SA.

“We have had an enormous amount of attacks and threat to our data here in South Australia, around the country and around the world.”

Premier Steven Marshall could not confirm the government’s trust in Frontier. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Mariuz

Mr Marshall said he was made aware of the breach late on Thursday night.

“There has been a breach, it will be thoroughly investigated and whatever comes out of that we’ll make sure that we put the very best security back in place,” he said.

“They have very good procedures in place. But in this case, we are seeing that threat, that escalating threat around the world that did breach their systems.”