Outsourcing firm and Government contractor Capita has said there is “no evidence” that any data was compromised after a cyber incident last week left staff unable to access systems.
The company, which is a major contractor for local authorities, said the incident on Friday caused “disruption” to some services provided to clients.
It is understood that companies that use Capita for call centre services, such as O2, were affected by the incident.
Local authorities, such as Barnet Council in London, also reported that the IT issue impacted some customer service lines.
On Monday, Capita said the IT failure primarily affected “access to internal Microsoft Office 365 applications”.
The firm added: “This caused disruption to some services provided to individual clients, though the majority of our client services remained in operation.”
The group’s security monitoring “swiftly alerted” it to the incident and technical crisis management protocols were then put in place, it said.
“Immediate steps were taken to successfully isolate and contain the issue,” the group added, in a statement to the stock market.
“The issue was limited to parts of the Capita network and there is no evidence of customer, supplier or colleague data having been compromised.”
It has now restored Capita staff access to Microsoft Office 365 and is “making good progress” in restoring remaining client services.
Does Capita have a history of leaks?
Capita is a British outsourcing and professional services company that provides services to both public and private sector organizations. The company, founded in 1984, has a diverse range of services that includes IT services, customer management, procurement, and training.
Despite its large and diverse portfolio, Capita has been associated with several data breaches and leaks.
In 2016, Capita was involved in a massive data breach when an employee sent sensitive personal data of 10,000 job applicants to the wrong email address. The data included sensitive personal details such as disabilities and criminal convictions.
In 2017, Capita was hit with another data breach when information belonging to 2,000 employees of the British National Health Service was mistakenly published online. The data included names, email addresses, and confidential financial details.
Also, in 2017, Capita was rocked with another data leak incident when an online training course which included the personal details of more than 3,300 Police staff was hacked.
These incidents led to criticism of Capita’s data handling policies and sparked calls for tighter regulation regarding the handling and storage of personal data. In response, Capita has reportedly implemented stricter data protection measures, including rigorous staff training, risk assessment, and use of encryption technologies.
However, despite these efforts, the company’s history of data leaks has contributed to a lack of public trust in its data handling practices.
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