Lewisham Council has begun to contact around 6,000 people whose financial data could have been affected by a breach of one of its IT storage portals.
The London borough said it has become aware of unauthorised access to the portal, used by its digital team for data analysis in a homelessness project, during April.
While the portal was outside its own IT network, which has remained secure, and it is not aware of any inappropriate use of the data, it is making people who could have been affected aware of the breach.
Data that could have been affected included personal details deriving from the council’s services for housing benefit, housing, adult social care, education, planning and council tax.
“We are taking this matter very seriously and have reported it as a crime,” the council said. “We are working with our partners and the appropriate regulators and authorities, and have already implemented a tightening of our security controls. The investigation into the matter continues.”
The IT team became aware of the hack when the system was subjected to a ransomware attack, which resulted in the corruption of the data. It acknowledged that, due to the complexity of the issue, it may never be possible to know exactly what data could be affected.
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