Capita hit by fresh data breach

Colchester City Council said it had notified the Information Commissioner’s Office that a "serious" data breach had occurred, and that it was awaiting further details from Capita, which was investigating. Capita manages services including council tax, business rates and benefits for Colchester.

According to The Times, a database with open source software and inflation was placed in the cloud by Capita that also contained personal data belonging to the council.

Colchester said it had taken "swift and decisive action" in response to the "unsafe storage of personal data by its financial services contractor Capita".

It added that the breach, which is understood to have also affected several other authorities, related to historic data and it was now secure.

But it also expressed "extreme disappointment" with Capita, and said it was "robustly addressing" the matter with the outsourcer.

A Capita spokesman said: "We are working with our third-party technical advisers to investigate the issue. The data is secure and no longer accessible.

"Our investigations into the matter are ongoing. The privacy and security of our client information is of the utmost importance to us."

The breach follows a major cyberattack on Capita in March, which hit pension trustee clients. USS, the UK’s biggest private sector pension plan, said earlier this month that the personal data of nearly 500,000 members may have been stolen during the attack.

Capita is the UK’s biggest outsourcer and the government’s largest software and IT services provider. Its contracts include manging phone lines and IT systems for NHS England primary care practitioners, including GPs and pharmacists; managing London’s congestion charge; and collecting the BBC licence fee.

As at 1130 BST on Wednesday, shares in Capita were off 2% at 31.42p.