Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR)

Summary

The Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR), operated by the University of Sydney, suffered a cyber attack on 24 February 2025 that took the website offline for over a week. The incident compromised user contact details and passwords, preventing researchers from registering new clinical trials or updating existing trial details.

What Happened

On 24 February 2025, the University of Sydney detected a cyber security incident affecting ANZCTR and its companion Australian Cancer Trials website. The university announced the breach on 28 February 2025 after taking the registry offline. Whilst the university established a read-only version of the site to allow searching existing data, researchers were unable to register new trials, update trial information, or recruit participants for new studies during the outage.

Impact on Individuals

All users of the ANZCTR portal and Australian Cancer Trials website were affected, with compromised data including contact details and passwords. The University of Sydney confirmed that no personal health data, whether identifiable or de-identified, was compromised at the investigation stage. The service disruption significantly impacted medical researchers who depend on timely trial registration.

Organisational Response

The University of Sydney launched an investigation and deployed a read-only version of the ANZCTR website to maintain access to existing trial data. The organisation advised researchers concerned about obtaining prospective registration labels to use alternative registries such as ClinicalTrials.gov or other WHO-recognised primary registries. No timeline was provided for full restoration of services.