The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) fined Interserve Group £4.4 million for violating data protection laws after it failed to protect the personal data of its employees.
An unidentified group of hackers launched a phishing attack in May 2020 to gain access to the systems of the construction firm and stole personal and financial information stored by Interserve on its 113,000 present and former employees, according to the ICO. It came to the conclusion that the business failed to implement adequate security measures to avoid such an attack.
A phishing email that had not been quarantined or prevented by the Interserve system was passed in May 2020 by an employee of the company either to an employee that opened it and downloaded its contents. On the employee's workstation, the malware was consequently installed.
The ICO claims that although the company's anti-virus system isolated the malware and provided an alert, it did not fully look into the suspicious activities. If it did so, the hacker would still have been able to access the company's systems.
Following the penetration of 283 systems and 16 accounts, the hacker removed the company's antivirus program. Up to 113,000 current and former employees' personal information was encrypted and made inaccessible.
Personal information like names, addresses, and bank account numbers were among the leaked data, along with certain category information like racial origin, religion, information about any disabilities, sexual orientation, and medical records.
According to John Edwards, the UK's information commissioner, "Firms are most in danger from internal complacency rather than external hackers. You can anticipate a similar fine from my office if your company doesn't routinely check its systems for suspicious behavior and ignores alerts, or if it doesn't update software and fails to teach employees."
The ICO has the authority to fine a data controller up to £17.5 million, or 4% of their total annual global revenue, whichever is larger. This fine was imposed under the DPA2018 (GDPR) for violations of the General Data Protection Regulation.
