New Zealand’s central bank said on Friday that it is going to postpone publication of most of its statistical data releases for a number of weeks while it is investigating a cyber attack that has led to a serious breach of its data systems. The breach was declared earlier this month and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) said a file sharing service provided by California-based Accellion was illegally accessed.
The Bank said that Statistics on bank customer lending, credit card balances and spending, new mortgage commitments, bank liquidity, non-bank lending institutions, and retail interest rates would be delayed. “RBNZ will be postponing publication of most statistical releases. We will provide an updated release calendar when we can, but we expect delays of 3-4 weeks to most publications,” RBNZ said in an email
“It’s clear the data affected was shared by banks and other institutions,” said Dave Parry, Professor of Computer Science at Auckland University of Technology. “There is possibly a loss of trust among these institutions that their data will be secure, until it’s been proven that it will be secure.”
RBNZ had said earlier in the day that the data breach investigation had significantly progressed and it was able to tell stakeholders which of their files were downloaded illegally.
In the meantime, The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) released its Sectoral Factor Model Inflation gauge for the fourth quarter of 2020 after NZ Stats released the official consumer price index (CPI) early Friday. The gauge rose to 1.8% YoY in Q4. The inflation measures are closely watched by the RBNZ, which has a monetary policy goal of achieving 1% to 3% inflation.
On the other hand the dollar was headed for its worst week of the year on Friday, as investors cheered in the Joe Biden administration by buying riskier currencies and refreshed bets that a pandemic recovery could push the greenback lower still.
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