Capita tells staff hackers stole personal data

Capita has told some of its employees that their personal data, including names, addresses and national insurance numbers, were stolen in a cyberattack earlier this year.

Earlier this year it was reported that more than 90 organisations whose data is held by Capita were affected by a data breach.

The outsourcing giant’s systems are used to manage pension funds for large employers including Royal Mail and Axa.

However, three months after the cyberattack by Russian hackers came to light, Capita has written to some of its own employees to inform them that their personal information had been identified among the stolen data.

This data included names, dates of birth, marital status, addresses, postcodes, salaries, email addresses, and employment details and history.

The letter said Capita was taking “extensive steps” to recover and secure the data and had appointed a consultant to check data was not sold on the dark web.

Employees are being offered a year’s free access to a credit-monitoring service.

One employee told The Times that the hack was “played down” during internal meetings, and claimed Capita executives had said that was “just a small breach”.

Capita has been contacted for a response.

Capita is not the only major employer to suffer a cyberattack in recent months. In April payroll giant SD Worx was forced to shut down all IT systems for its UK and Ireland services after discovering “malicious activities”, and in May hackers from the ransomware group Clop stole data from users of the MOVEit Transfer file-sharing tool, including payroll service provider Zellis.

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