Capita cyber attack: Employees temporarily lost access to Microsoft Office 365 applications

Capita, one of the UK’s largest outsourcing companies, suffered a cyber attack that affected employees’ access to internal Microsoft Office 365 applications.

The issue was first spotted on March 31 when employees faced technical issues and were not able to log in as they kept getting a “password incorrect” error. The company immediately launched an investigation to understand the nature of the technical issue.

“We are aware of a technical issue with our systems, which we are investigating,” a Capita spokesperson said in a statement.

In a filing with the London Stock Exchange, the company later said that the technical issues were a result of a cyber attack it suffered on March 31 that affected employees’ access to internal Microsoft Office 365 applications. The company also said that while most of its clients’ operations remain unaffected, some “services provided to individual clients” were disrupted due to the cyber attack.

“Our IT security monitoring capabilities swiftly alerted us to the incident, and we quickly invoked our established and practised technical crisis management protocols. Immediate steps were taken to successfully isolate and contain the issue,” Capita said in its filing.

“The issue was limited to parts of the Capita network and there is no evidence of customer, supplier or colleague data having been compromised,” the company added.

Capita also said that it is working with specialist technical partners and has been successful in restoring employees’ access to Microsoft Office 365 and “are making are making good progress restoring remaining client services in a secure and controlled manner.”

According to reports, the National Cyber Security Centre, the Cabinet Office, and other government agencies have been notified about the security incident as Capita has several significant clients in the public sector, including the Ministry of Defence. The company has played an important role in training simulators for the Royal Navy’s nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.