A number of London councils have been hit by a cyber assault, with the potential for residents’ information to have been compromised.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and Westminster Metropolis Council (WCC) – who share a variety of IT methods – observed the incident on Monday and have knowledgeable the Info Commissioner’s Workplace – a step often taken when information is compromised.
An announcement from RBKC added that the councils are working with the “help of specialist cyber incident experts and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), with the focus on protecting systems and data, restoring systems, and maintaining critical services to the public”.
Graeme Stewart, head of public sector at Examine Level, the corporate credited with inventing the firewall, mentioned the scenario had “all the signs of a serious intrusion”.
In accordance with the RBKC assertion, they and WCC share IT providers with Hammersmith and Fulham council, and there are studies providers there have been impacted.
The council’s assertion added: “We don’t have all the answers yet, as the management of this incident is still ongoing.”
It went on: “At this stage it’s too early to say who did this, and why, however we’re investigating to see if any information has been compromised – which is commonplace observe.
“Our IT teams worked through the night yesterday and a number of successful mitigations were put in place, and we remain vigilant should there be any further incidents or issues.”
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1:43UK ‘should be worried’ about cyber assaults
“That’s classic behaviour when attackers get hold of credentials or move laterally through a shared environment. Once they’re inside one part of the network, they can hop through connected systems far faster than most councils can respond.”
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He continued: “The choice to close down providers so rapidly isn’t an overreaction – it tells you they think this might escalate into encryption or information theft.
“Councils maintain extremely delicate materials: social-care recordsdata, identification paperwork, housing information, all the things you’d want for focused fraud or extortion. If attackers acquired close to that, the fallout wouldn’t keep native.
“The NCSC and Met being pulled in at velocity exhibits that is being handled as a high-risk occasion, not an IT outage. And it must be.
“Local authorities remain some of the easiest public-sector targets because they’re running huge workloads on tight budgets with uneven cyber maturity.”
The Metropolitan Police has additionally been approached for remark.
