Council says cyber attack cost six figures
Hackney Council is to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds more than planned as part of the work Recover from cyber attacks in 2020.
Councilor Robert Chapman said the borough’s “financial predicament remains dire”, with overspends totaling almost £37m for the accounting year.
Council accounts show that £344,000 has been spent hiring more agency staff, partly to manage the backlog caused by the attack.
An extra £413,000 is being spent on IT consultants with “cyber security knowledge”.
In January 2021 a criminal group posted personal details of council staff and residents on the dark web following a ransomware attack three months earlier.
In July this year, Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) reprimands local authority For “the lack of appropriate security and procedures to protect personal data”.
ICO deputy commissioner Stephen Bonner called the breach a “blatant and avoidable error” by the council, after the regulator found “simple mistakes like usernames and passwords being the same for inactive accounts”.
“Although nefarious actors are always present, councils have failed to effectively implement adequate measures that could have better protected their systems and data from cyber attacks,” Mr Bonner said.
“Time and again, we see violations that would not have occurred if such mistakes had been avoided,” he said.
Responding at the time, Hackney Council disagreed with the ICO’s findings, saying it had not breached its safeguarding obligations.
In 2023, the council announced it would purchase a new “off-the-shelf” accommodation system to deal with ongoing technical problems following the hack.
The council report said the fallout from the cyberattack had exacerbated the “challenging financial environment” for the borough, particularly given the real-world decline of around 40% in government funding since 2010.
