Victorian Department of Education – January 2026 data breach

Tech Talks With Kinsoft · Jan 27, 2026 · 9m · transcript

In January 2026, a major cyberattack targeted the Victorian Department of Education, compromising the personal data of over 665,000 current and former students. Unauthorized parties accessed a central database containing student names, email addresses, and encrypted passwords across more than 1,500 government schools. Experts attribute the scale of the breach to a "flat network" architecture that lacked internal barriers, allowing intruders to move easily between systems. In response, authorities deactivated affected accounts, reset passwords, and launched a formal investigation via the…