One staff member, who asked not to be named, said they were unable to log into their laptop, with their usual password rejected as “incorrect”. Employees received a text from the company at 8.45am explaining that there was a company-wide problem. The problem is chiefly affecting the Office365 program suite, which includes email, Teams virtual meetings and Word and Excel but clients’ systems appear to be unaffected.Īccording to sources at Capita, company systems went down at 4am but many staff were not aware until they tried to log on at 7am. Some employees still have access to computers and email, and the company said its investigation was in the early stages and that it was too soon to tell if the failure was caused by a cyber-attack.Ĭapita was still unsure if hackers were behind the outage on Friday afternoon but there is no evidence of a data breach as yet, according to a source close to the company. People at sites including critical national infrastructure have resorted to using radios, pens and paper, the source said. Their websites displayed messages on Friday saying that phone lines for their benefits, council tax and business rates call centres were down.Ĭapita also has its own cybersecurity division, and claims to block 1m spam emails a year from entering school networks.Ī source familiar with the outage said the National Cyber Security Centre, the Cabinet Office and other government agencies had been alerted to the incident, given the group’s role in sensitive areas such as Royal Navy training centres and security at Ministry of Defence bases. In a later statement, issued on Friday evening, a Capita spokesperson said: “We would like to reassure any customers whose services have been affected that we are making good progress and working closely with our technical partners to swiftly resolve the issues.”Ĭapita’s customers include the London boroughs of Barnet, and Barking and Dagenham, and South Oxfordshire. Capita is one of the government’s biggest suppliers, with £6.5bn of public sector contracts spanning London’s congestion charge system to recruiting soldiers for the army.Ī spokesperson for the company, who was unable to access their own email, said: “We are aware of a technical issue with our systems, which we are investigating.” The outage exposes the vulnerability of critical public services to cyber incidents – and the increasing role of outsourcing companies in delivering those services.
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