Capita suffers up to £20m costs from cyberattack

Outsourcing firm and government contractor Capita will incur costs of up £20m from a recent cyberattack that saw customer, supplier and staff data hacked.

The company, which is a major contractor for Uk local authorities, said the attack in March will results in costs between £15m and £20m. These are made up of specialist professional fees, recovery and remediation costs, and investment to reinforce Capita’s cyber security environment.

The firm did not say whether it had cyber insurance in place to cover the loss.

Capita said an investigation into the incident has revealed that data was taken from less than 0.1% of its server estate. It noted that the unauthorised intrusion was interrupted and its impact was therefore significantly reduced.

The company said it has continued to work closely with specialist advisers and forensic experts to investigate and resolve the cyber incident.

“Capita has taken extensive steps to recover and secure the customer, supplier and colleague data contained within the impacted server estate, and to remediate any issues arising from the incident,” it said.

The group said it is working closely with all appropriate regulatory authorities, customers, suppliers and colleagues to notify those affected and take any remaining necessary steps to address the incident.

Capita has also taken further steps to ensure the integrity, safety and security of its IT infrastructure.

Capita was hit by the cyberattack on 31 March. It said at the time that the incident primarily impacted access to internal Microsoft Office 365 applications, including email, Teams virtual meetings, Word and Excel.

“This caused disruption to some services provided to individual clients, though the majority of our client services remained in operation,” it added.