The UKs data regulator has issued the council with a formal reprimand, but the two parties differ over the extent to which the authority could have taken additional security measures
The Information Commissioner’s Office has issued a formal reprimand to the London Borough of Hackney over what the regulator claims was “a clear and avoidable error… that resulted in a mass loss of data”.
However, the east London council has openly disagreed with the penalty, claiming that the watchdog “has misunderstood the facts and misapplied the law”. The authority will not launch an appeal though, having concluded that “we do not believe it is in our residents’ interests to use our limited resources to challenge the ICO’s decision”.
A successful cyberattack in October 2020 resulted in “hackers gaining access to and encrypting 440,000 files, affecting at least 280,000 residents and other individuals including staff”, according the ICO.
Some of the data accessed and encrypted during the breach included citizens’ sensitive personal information, including details of “racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, health data, economic data, criminal offence data, and other data including basic personal identifiers such as names and addresses”
The data regulator said that 9,605 records were stolen in the attack, and claimed that Hackney has accepted that 230 individuals had faced “a meaningful risk of harm” as a result. The attackers also successfully “deleted 10% of the council’s backup before the council managed to intervene”.
The disruption to the authority’s systems persisted into 2022 – a period of well over a year, the ICO said. The watchdog said that, following the attack, it had received 39 complaints from individuals regarding an inadequate response to a subject access request.
Following the conclusion of its probe into the matter, the regulator said that its investigators had “found examples of a lack of proper security and processes to protect personal data,” and that the council had “failed to ensure that a security patch management system was actively applied to all devices, and failed to change an insecure password on a dormant account still connected to Hackney council servers which was exploited by the attackers”.
The ICO’s deputy commissioner Stephen Bonner added: “This was a clear and avoidable error from London Borough of Hackney, one that has resulted in a mass loss of data and has had a severely detrimental impact on many residents. At its absolute worst, this has meant that some of the most deeply personal information possible has ended up in the hands of the attackers. Systems that people rely on were offline for many months. This is entirely unacceptable and should not have happened.”
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He added: “Whilst nefarious actors may always exist, the council failed to effectively implement sufficient measures that could have better protected their systems and data from cyber-attacks. Anyone responsible for protecting personal data should not make simple mistakes like having dormant accounts where the username and password are the same. Time and time again, we see breaches that would not have happened if such mistakes were avoided.”
But Hackney took issue with this conclusion, with a spokesperson for the authority stating that “we maintain that the council has not breached its security obligations [and] we consider that the ICO has misunderstood the facts and misapplied the law with respect to the issues in question, and has mischaracterised and exaggerated the risk to residents’ data”.
To protect its limited budgets, however, borough said that it will not challenge the ICO’s penalty but “instead, we will continue to work closely with the National Cyber Security Centre, central government and colleagues across local government and the wider public sector to play our part in defending public services against the ever increasing threats of cyberattack”.
Hackney mayor Caroline Woodley added: “This was a deplorable attack by sophisticated, organised cybercriminals, coming at a time when we were responding to the first wave of the covid pandemic. While we do not agree with all the ICO’s findings, the completion of the investigation means we can focus on our ongoing efforts to keep data secure and deliver the vital services that our residents rely on. We deeply regret the impact that this senseless criminal attack had on Hackney residents and businesses, and I am grateful to council staff who continued delivering for our communities despite the challenges, and to our residents for their patience while services were impacted.”
A new approach
The ICO said that it considered imposing a fine on Hackney but “due to the positive actions taken” by the council in light of the breach, it had decided to limit the punishment solely to a formal reprimand.
This penalty is also in line with the public sector approach adopted by the ICO in the since summer 2022 – in which monetary penalties have largely been avoided, in favour of working with public bodies to improve data-protection standards. After the conclusion of an initial two-year trial, the future of this approach is currently under review.
In an interview with PublicTechnology last year – about 15 months into the trial period – Bonner said that the regulator would be “good scientists” in assessing the impact of the revised approach and its efficacy going forward.
But he added that the – anecdotal – evidence so far had suggested that, without the spectre of financial losses looming over every mistake, organisations has been less likely to take an approach of “how do we avoid the fine, rather than how do we get to a good outcome?”.
“It also shows we understand the pressures they’re under and recognise that funding may be very tight, and therefore things that might impact on that funding further may not be the most effective use of resources,” Bonner said. “Instead: can we get them to the outcome that they need? And can they then help others to do that? Because it’s not just cooperation with us – it’s cooperation with the ecosystem, to raise standards everywhere. That is vital. And cover-ups don’t help anyone.”
Announcing the latest reprimand for London borough, the deputy commissioner said: “There is a vital learning from this for both Hackney and for councils across the country – systems must be updated; you have to take preventative measures to reduce the risk and potential impact of human error and you must ensure that data that is entrusted to you is protected.
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