Just some days earlier than Christmas, I broke information that The Guardian newspaper had suffered what turned out to be a ransomware assault, forcing employees to work at home.
I have been instructed that @guardian has suffered a “critical IT incident” which is affecting entry to all its workplaces.
Workers are being instructed to work at home, and to not use VPN to log in to any programs… 🙁
Wishing the Guardian IT workforce properly, particularly right now of yr. pic.twitter.com/d31YOkmwoY
— Graham Cluley 🇺🇦 (@gcluley) December 21, 2022
Three weeks have now handed, and though the revered UK newspaper has continued to be printed and its web site remained on-line all through, there isn’t simply excellent news to report.
Yesterday, employees on the 200-year-old information organisation had been despatched an electronic mail that warned them that the continuing investigation into the assault had uncovered that hackers had gained entry to information containing employees’s private data.
In accordance with the e-mail, information accessed contains:
- names
- addresses
- dates of beginning
- Nationwide Insurance coverage numbers
- checking account particulars
- wage data
- and identification paperwork reminiscent of passports.
Yeuch.
The Guardian knowledgeable its employees that it had “had seen no proof that private information has been uncovered on-line, and so the chance is low. We’re persevering with to watch for this.”
We realise this information could also be very worrying for everybody, and we wish to say how sorry we’re for any nervousness this will now trigger. However now that we have now confirmed there’s a danger, we are going to do all the pieces we are able to to assist employees…
The Guardian contacted the Data Commissioner’s Workplace (ICO) earlier this month to report the incident. Organisations are required to inform the ICO of any information breaches inside 72 hours of changing into conscious of it.
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