Master Builders Cybersecurity Incident

Master Builders is currently investigating a cybersecurity incident that took its websites and member services offline for multiple days. Phone services were still operational over the course of the incident, and the website came back online this morning.

"Our service provider has experienced a cyber security incident impacting one of the platforms that hosts Master Builders’ websites," said a spokeswoman for Master Builders. "We are working with our provider to restore our systems. There is an ongoing investigation into the cause of this incident."

"Our IT provider has advised that there is no evidence that our data was breached. This is continuing to be investigated by the appropriate government agencies," she added. "The outage has impacted our websites. Members have been unable to download contracts or lodge their Master Build 10-Year Guarantee applications via the website."

Despite Master Builders receiving assurance from their IT provider that no data was compromised, this cannot be confirmed. A breach of an IT provider could give an attacker access to its customers' data, as was seen just last week when Auckland-based IT provider Lantech suffered a data breach, compromising Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ).