Capita, a business process outsourcer, has come under scrutiny once again after it was revealed that historic data from several local authorities was stored on an unsecured cloud server managed by the company. 

The news comes not long after a cyber attack in March which later was revealed to have leaked customer, supplier, and colleague data of an alleged half million members. 

Colchester Council, one of Capita’s clients, expressed disappointment with the outsourcing firm and accused it of unsafe storage of personal data. 

“The privacy and security of personal information is paramount, and we are extremely disappointed that such a serious data breach by one of our contractors has occurred,” said Richard Block, Colchester City Council’s Chief Operating Officer in a press release. 

Colchester Council discovered a serious data breach when files containing benefits data for the financial years 2019-20 and 2020-21 were found on an unsecured Amazon Data Bucket controlled by Capita. 

After becoming aware of the incident, Colchester Council assured that the records in question were properly secured. They say they have reported the incident to regulatory authorities and will cooperate with any investigation.

Although Capita maintains that there was no evidence of malicious use of the data, and that no personal baking details were compromised, Colchester Council expressed concerns about the outsourcer’s failure to maintain necessary data protection standards. 

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“We require all parties involved in the handling of sensitive information to adhere to the highest standards of data protection and it is unacceptable that Capita has failed to meet these required standards,” said Block.

The incident is believed to have affected other local authorities across the country. Capita provides services to other local authorities such as Colchester, Barking and Dagenham, and Barnet. 

Capita also provides services to departments within the central government including the Ministry of Defence (MoD). While the government stated that the incident had minimal impact on its services, the MoD has reportedly increased protection and monitoring of its connections with Capita.