Warning as Sheffield schools hit by data leak after hackers target Capita

The incident affects the payrolls of a number of schools across the city, who have individual contracts with the private company Capita, which provides payroll services.

Sheffield Council has confirmed it is aware of the problem, describing it as ‘a data breach by Capita from information they hold’.

The council says it is not involved in the data hack, and its role is to support schools throughout this period.

Councillor Dawn Dale, who chairs the education, children and families policy committee, said: “We’re aware of a potential data breach following unauthorised cyber activity that has taken place at Capita, affecting a number of schools throughout Sheffield who have individual contracts with Capita. This affects staff working at each school.

“We are supporting schools throughout this period and Capita have referred themselves to the Information Commissioner’s Office, as well as alerting the Cabinet Office and Department for Education.”

One city school employee said they had received an email from Capita saying they could not currently say with certainty what type of data might have been affected, but files containing data Capita processes on behalf of the school had been identified on an affected server as a result of the cyber incident. It had stated that data could include information such as names, dates of birth and national insurance numbers.

They added they had been told Capita had no evidence that information resulting from the incident had been misused, and the firm had taken extensive steps to recover and secure the data.

It said it was working with authorities including the Information Commissioner's Office, The Financial Conduct Authority and the National Cyber Security Centre.

It was recently revealed Capita was affected by a cyber attack that saw some customer, supplier and staff data accessed by hackers.

Capita said it faces a bill of up to £20 million to deal with the incident, including for recovery and remediation costs and to invest in reinforcing its cyber security defences.

Earlier this week, NHS England said it reported a data breach to the Information Commissioners’ Office following the Capita incident, but said no health data or other patient data was included in the lists or accessed as a result of the incident.