Tirlán has confirmed it is continuing to work with its “current” third-party printing and mailing provider following a data breach.
The company, formally known as Glanbia Co-op and Glanbia Ireland, said it is working with its third party supplier “to establish root cause and review all procedures” following an issue with its August milk statement mailing to suppliers.
Earlier this month it acknowledged that a significant number of suppliers had “regrettably received information relating to another individual supplier as part of their monthly milk statement for August”.
Following the incident the board of Tirlán said it had “prioritised a track and retrieval process to retrieve impacted statements as swiftly as possible”.
The co-op contacted all affected suppliers to ask them “to confidentially and securely” retain any milk statement that belonged to another supplier and to return any incorrect statement to it.
Tirlán also referred details of the data breach in early October to the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC).
A spokesperson for Tirlán told Agriland:
“A large number of suppliers have already returned the statement on receipt of the prepaid envelope. Tirlán would like to thank our suppliers for their cooperation in the swift retrieval of statements.”
When asked by Agriland if Tirlán had ended the business contract with the third party service provider on the back of the data breach issue, a spokesperson for Tirlán said: “We are working with our current third-party printing and mailing provider to establish root cause and review all procedures.”
The DPC confirmed it has received a breach notification in relation to Tirlán and that the matter “is currently under assessment”.
The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) has said that Tirlán will need to provide a clear explanation for the data breach.
The president of ICMSA, Pat McCormack, said that the matter was “very serious and represented an obvious and irreparable breach of privacy and data”.
McCormack said a clear explanation was required and ICMSA said it would hope that “Tirlán remember to extend the same generosity and understanding to farmer suppliers who make genuine mistakes in their dealings with the processor.”