Capita IT breach gets worse as Black Basta claims it's now selling off stolen data Black Basta, the extortionists who claimed they were the ones who lately broke into Capita, have reportedly put up for sale sensitive details, including bank account information, addresses, and passport photos, stolen from the IT outsourcing giant. A spokesperson for the London-based corporation, which has UK government …
Can Crapita cannot really suffer much additional reputational damage? Everyone I know who has had to deal with them* despises them.
* I don't know any people receiving corporate freebies or similar from Crapita - I would guess they are probably the only people with a favourable view of them
A generation of outsourcing public services for the sake of political ideology has left us with providers who are every bit as awful as the original public-sector organisations, but who are now too big to fail and too intransigent to reform. Reputation only matters to the accountable.
the original public sector organisations WEREN'T bad. What we're seeing now is 40 odd years of concentrated effort on the part of the outsourcers and auditors like Accentshite into removing the good people from Govt departments Worldwide and forcing Governments essentially into taking on their services, many times for FREE to get a foot in the door or at a loss.
Internal staff will ALWAYS be better than a consultancy and you get to keep the expertise, unlike the consultancies or MSP's who'll bugger off without doing any documentation.
Carrilion failed, Fujitsu or any firm that has taken management from them should NEVER be allowed near any Government contract. I'm still amazed that the whole management layer isn't in jail yet over the Post Office fiasco.
Capita should never see another contract, government or private again!
We should be seeing high public sector wages, the removal of IR35 rules to get direct hiring back in fashion and the refusal to use any of the big consultancies or any MSP.
I agree completely.
But there is a genuine problem with the salary levels required for decent IT staff - public sector payscales correlate seniority with salary, and the salary expectation of a decent IT wonk would place them inappropriately high up in the management structure of any public sector organisation. No department director in a local authority wants to find themselves being paid less than a programmer or IT strategist who sits three tiers of management below them.
But it would be both wonderful if a solution to this problem could be found, and direct employment of good IT teams could be viable again in the public sector - and it would certainly save a great deal of taxpayers' money in the long run.
"the original public sector organisations WEREN'T bad. "
People my age remember when the public sector included car manufacturers who made really crappy vehicles on the occasional days that they weren't on strike, and when waiting months for the GPO to install a phone line was universal rather than being the occasional Openreach screwup it is now.
But that's not the whole picture, and you're right about some areas - the white collar public sector (NHS, education etc) was much better-resourced and more effective than it is now, and I knew people who worked directly in IT roles for the NHS and for local authorities.
But that was when the basic rate of income tax was 33%, and the top rate was in the 80s - and those working in public-sector IT didn't expect six-figure salaries. I doubt that anyone in modern Britain is about to get elected on a manifesto of putting failing public sector organisations back on their feet by upping income tax by half - much as that could well erode inequality and build a healthier and happier nation. People nowadays prefer to keep their hard-earned for spending on gambling, pay-TV, and leasing the latest chelsea tractor for the school run - they don't want some well-meaning lefty fuckwit giving any of it to the poor.
I Agree with you about the cars (although all cars were rubbish until the Japanese got into the game) However, the GPO delivery of telephones lines...lets not forget how long it takes to get those lines in.
I've waited 4 years for fibre so far because people have to dig the roads...the ONLY reason Openreach can get you internet in 2 weeks is because the tax payer spent a fortune in the 70s and 80s paying for the holes to be dug all over the country. Every other poor bugger has to go through the nightmare of digging up entire towns to get their cables in because somehow OpenReach are allowed to keep hold of that last mile, which the taxpayer paid for in the beginning.
and don't get me STARTED on the fact that every house in this country should have had fibre in the 90s!! Privatisation driving the way forwards. over 2 decades down and we STILL don't have fibre to the wall in most places.
People my age remember when the public sector included car manufacturers who made really crappy vehicles on the occasional days that they weren't on strike, and when waiting months for the GPO to install a phone line was universal
I'm 65.
These aren't what people mostly refer to as the "public sector". Also, Post Office telephones was a dinosaur of the early days of telecommunications, which is why it was added to the post office. The Royal Mail/Post Office was good compared to many/most other countries and provided far more than we get today.
But the "public sector" did include local authority "Direct Works" and Parks departments. And most of these were pretty good. Especially considering the begrudging attitude we have to public spending- even though these are the same service we most want. Like getting bins emptied and roads repaired. Or keeping libraries open and schools' roofs from leaking.
"e every bit as awful as the original public-sector organisations,"
Herein lies part of the problem. They weren't, by and large. awful. Or even bad.And weren't spending lots of our money on feeding shareholders and C Suite execs etc.
Sometimes bureaucratic. But most of the claims were simply demonising by the very people who now benefit from megacorp cheques or own megacorp newspapers. Just as Brexit was built on the foundations of stories about "straight cucumbers" and so forth.And also by the same people for the same motives. ££££££
"Actually Brexit was built on stories of an EU wide armed forces" - in your head only I suspect.
Ask anyone who voted Brexit why, and the vast majority will say one or more of immigration, sovereignty or freedom from EU interference/regulation. I doubt they will be able to explain what they actually mean or back it up with facts, but those were by far the main drivers.
Most of the Crapita contracts I'm aware of were gained by doing the lowest cost - the "CIPS Gold" (in inverted commas because, well, it's useless) sourcing teams in councils don't look at value, just the bottom line cost, and thus whoever submits the cheapest quote gets the contract. Crapita are aware of this and generally undercut / undervalue their bids compared to the competition to get the contract, and then tend to run day to day on multiple change requests. 'Oh - you want us to do our job? Well, it wasn't in the contract so it's a CR...' etc
It's within 72 hours, and it's "where feasible":
In the case of a personal data breach, the controller shall without undue delay and, where feasible, not later than 72 hours after having become aware of it, notify the personal data breach to the supervisory authority competent in accordance with Article 55, unless the personal data breach is unlikely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons.Where the notification to the supervisory authority is not made within 72 hours, it shall be accompanied by reasons for the delay.
(src)
They'll weasel out if it by saying they wanted to be "sure" that particular details were leaked. So you should expect them to notify you (well, the ICO) about 71 hours after your details are spaffed all over the internet.
“We continue to work closely with specialist advisers and forensic experts” - with all those billions in the bank you’d assume they had that sort of expertise in-house. Perhaps they follow their own advice and outsource their vital services to a bunch of incompetent low-lifes... ?
what the actual hell are they doing then? they regularly advertise themselves to all and sundry in their RFP responses as full service expertise in all fields of computing.
clearly someone forgot to write their responses on bog roll eh?
Dont forget they also run the smart metering infrastracture for the whole of the uk....
Smart DCC Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Capita plc and is regulated by Ofgem. Registered in England under company number 08641679.
Also due to governemnt rules on contract assignments you are not allowed to take performance on any previous government contracts into account when awarding new ones. So reputational damage doesnt really matter and they can continue to milk us all without recource.
> Dont forget they also run the smart metering infrastracture for the whole of the uk....
I assume you meant "for the whole of GB" - Northern Ireland is a separate powergrid than GB and there's no smart metering here (yet AFAIK) and if there ever will be I assume it will be run separately than that of GB.
From https://www.nienetworks.co.uk/meter-update
"The Department for the Economy (DfE) has no plans at present to install smart meters in Northern Ireland"
It doesn't just affect large firms I in a group of people whose pensions are administrated by capita we have been told they have loads of our data including names ,d.o.b,national insurance numbers location phone numbers and employment history as well as bank details we are all quite worried they took 12 weeks to inform us and I have had an increase in scam calls and 2 credit card applications gone in I am severely disabled and housebound and this is causing me so much stress and there's not much I can do except wait
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