UK govt department reveals it suffered ‘serious cyber incident’

The UK’s Foreign Office has paid over £450,000 for tech assistance in the aftermath of cyberattack

British government documents have revealed that the country’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) recently sustained a previously unreported “serious cyber incident,” and paid out over £467,000 (nearly $633,000) to cover the cost of its “remediation and investigation.”

According to a tender information document published on the department’s website on February 4, “provision of urgent business support” by IT consultants BAE Systems Applied Intelligence cost the FCDO £467,325.60.

The assistance, which the document says involved the “provision of Business Analyst and Technical Architect support” following a cyber security incident, was required as a matter of “extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable for the contracting authority.” As a result, the document adds, the contract had been awarded to the defense firm’s cyber-security subsidiary without a call for competition.

“Due to the nature of the cyber security incident, the specific Deliverables cannot be disclosed,” the document states. Neither the details of the cyberattack nor its exact date have been disclosed. However, January 12, 2022, is mentioned on the tender document as a date of conclusion of the contract, indicating the tech security incident had apparently taken place before then.

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“We do not comment on security, but have systems in place to detect and defend against potential cyber incidents,” a spokesperson for the government department told the BBC, commenting on the tender.

According to the broadcaster’s information, unidentified hackers attacked the FCDO systems, but were detected and no classified or highly sensitive material was compromised.