The construction firm Interserve has been slapped with a £4.4 million GDPR fine for failing to prevent a phishing attack and the theft of the personal and financial information of up to 113,000 employees.
Interserve is a construction and outsourcing group, which, at the time of the cyberattack in 2020, was a strategic supplier to the UK government, including the Ministry of Defense. An employee received a phishing email and forwarded it to a colleague, who opened the email and downloaded the malicious content, which saw malware installed on its network. What happened next is all too common in cyberattacks. The threat actors had a foothold in the network, then moved laterally, and compromised 283 Interserve systems and 16 accounts.
Interserve’s anti-virus software was then uninstalled by the threat actors, and ransomware was deployed to encrypt files on the network. The information accessed, encrypted, and stolen by the attackers included highly sensitive employee information such as contact information, national insurance numbers, and bank account details. Data classed as special category data under the GDPR was also compromised, including ethnic origin, religion, details of any disabilities, sexual orientation, and health information.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) investigated the cyberattack and data breach and determined Interserve had failed to put appropriate security measures in place to prevent cyberattacks such as this, and the lack of appropriate safeguards left Interserve vulnerable to cyberattacks from March 2019 to December 2020.
The ICO identified several areas where the attack could have been identified and blocked. The initial phishing email was not blocked, nor was the malicious email detected when it was forwarded internally. The company had anti-virus software installed, which quarantined the malware and generated a security alert, yet Interserve failed to investigate the suspicious activity. Had it been investigated Interserve should have been able to determine that the attacker still had access to its network. The ICO also found outdated software systems and protocols in use, there was a lack of staff training, and insufficient risk assessments had been performed.
The failure to implement appropriate safeguards violated information privacy laws, resulting in a £4.4 million fine being proposed. The response of Interserve to that notice of intent to fine did nothing to warrant any reduction in the penalty.
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“The biggest cyber risk businesses face is not from hackers outside of their company, but from complacency within their company. If your business doesn’t regularly monitor for suspicious activity in its systems and fails to act on warnings, or doesn’t update software and fails to provide training to staff, you can expect a similar fine from my office,” said UK Information Commissioner, John Edwards.
These cybersecurity failures are all too common at businesses and they leave the door wide open for hackers, yet malware and ransomware attacks such as this can easily be prevented. In this case, following cybersecurity best practices, ensuring employees practice good cyber hygiene, and responding to security alerts quickly could have prevented or certainly reduced the severity of the data breach.
An effective email security solution should have been in place for detecting malicious emails, first when the initial email was received and again when it was forwarded. The email should have been quarantined and checked by the IT security team. Had appropriate end-user training been provided, both employees should have been aware of the threat of email-based attacks and known how to identify phishing emails. The IT security team should also have investigated the alert and suspicious network activity.
It is not possible to prevent all cyberattacks but implementing an advanced spam filter and providing security awareness training to employees will go a long way toward improving an organization’s security posture. Those are areas where TitanHQ can help. TitanHQ has developed a suite of cybersecurity solutions including SpamTitan Email Security, the SafeTitan Security Awareness and Phishing Simulation Platform, and the WebTitan DNS Filter for blocking web-based attacks.
For more information on improving your security posture to block cyberattacks, prevent data breaches, and protect against financial penalties from regulators, give the TitanHQ team a call.