THE government has a lead on the alleged data theft of civil servant e-payslips and the National Cyber Security Agency (Nacsa) will issue a statement soon.

Communications and Multimedia Minister Annuar Musa said the government has held several meetings and discussions as it viewed the data leak and theft seriously.

“In the case of alleged data theft involving e-payslips and such, we have agreed that not many should issue statements, as we do not want to distract from current investigations.

“We have agreed that whatever updates need to be issued by Nacsa and the Prime Minister’s Department, so what I can inform is that we have certain leads and action is being followed up,” he told reporters in Kota Baru today.

Annuar said his ministry was developing a framework to improve or curb cases of data theft, adding that the problem is not exclusive to Malaysia alone.

“I want to state this because many misunderstand, theft of personal data, which come under the supervision of private companies, they are included under the Personal Data Protection Act 2010, and managed under the Data Protection Department, under the Communications and Multimedia Ministry.

“Data from ministerial departments and institutions are not under the Data Protection Department, but under Nacsa and the Prime Minister’s Department.

“The alleged e-payslip breach is under Nacsa, but CyberSecurity Malaysia will provide assistance in terms of forensics investigation,” he added.

It was earlier reported that an alleged data theft where hackers claiming to be from a “grey hat” cyber security organisation alleged that they had breached the civil servant e-payslip system to expose its weakness.

The group claimed it could access more than a million rows of identities via the database, which is in the format of JavaScript Object Notation and comma-separated values. – Bernama, September 18, 2022.