Corporate watchdog ASIC was hit with a cybersecurity breach on January 15 that has potentially exposed personal information.

ASIC announced on January 25 that the incident involved unauthorised access to a server that contained documents associated with recent Australian credit licence applications.

The server provider, Accellion, is a US software firm that facilitates cloud-based file sharing and collaboration. The firm claims to prevent third-party cyber data breaches and compliance violations with its enterprise content firewall.

While the investigation is ongoing, ASIC said, it appears that "there is some risk that some limited information may have been viewed by the threat actor".

"At this time ASIC has not seen evidence that any Australian credit licence application forms or any attachments were opened or downloaded."

ASIC has since disabled access to the server and is working on alternative arrangements for submitting credit application attachments, engaging cybersecurity to undertake a detailed forensic investigation to bring systems back online safely.

It is also working with Accellion and has notified the relevant agencies and those impacted by the incident.

"As a precaution, and to protect information and systems, ASIC has disabled access to the affected server. ASIC is working on alternative arrangements for submitting credit application attachments which will be implemented shortly," ASIC wrote on its website.