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The Overseas, Commonwealth & Progress Office environment (FCDO) was the concentrate on of a “serious cyber security incident”, forcing it to seek out urgent assistance to deal with the crisis.
The UK authorities discovered the existence of the incident in a public tender announcement, as uncovered by The Stack. The contract award see revealed that the FCDO paid BAE Devices Used Intelligence £467,325.60 just after it was hit by a serious cyber security incident, even more aspects of have not be disclosed.
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In response to the incident, it said that urgent assist was necessary to assist remediation and investigation. The date of summary of the deal was 12 January 2022, whilst the tender was released on 4 February 2022.
BAE Units was the only tender been given, as the FCDO was not able to comply with the time limitations for the open or restricted processes or competitive treatments with negotiation thanks to the urgency and criticality of the work.
“The Awarded Provider is the Authority’s lengthy term incumbent company administration integrator and as this kind of had assets on web page with major knowledge and knowledge of the Authority’s infrastructure,” reported the tender.
A International, Commonwealth & Advancement Business spokesperson explained to IT Pro: “We do not comment on security but have units in position to detect and protect against opportunity cyber incidents.”
While the ICO originally told The Stack it experienced not been contacted by the FCDO about the incident, a spokesperson told IT Pro: “We are conscious of media studies in relation to this matter and we will make enquiries.”
A report from the BBC adds that unknown hackers received inside of FCDO methods, but were being detected.
“It’s not surprising that the FCDO has been a target of a cyber attack and is routinely focused as this sort of specified the elaborate geopolitical circumstance we are in at existing,” explained Paul McKay, principal analyst at Forrester. “We do not know much about the breach and how it was detected and what the root result in is, and neither will we in all probability.
“What is extra astonishing is that the disclosure less than regular governing administration shelling out disclosures was how we found out about it and does not appear to have been the intention. The FCDO will require to imagine about how they satisfy the mandates to authorities spending transparency, with the have to have to retain some discretion in these circumstances, specified the sensitivity of the work FCDO performs”.
Other governments have faced cyber security issues a short while ago. The Ukrainian government, for illustration, launched an investigation in January after its web sites ended up taken down in a cyber attack. Messages appeared on the internet sites just before they went down, warning Ukranians to “be worried and prepare for the worst”.
Some elements of this write-up are sourced from:
www.itpro.co.uk