A group of lawyers have decided to file a lawsuit against the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) for failing to protect the information of its police officers from a ransomware breach.
The final decision to sue PFEW will be taken in the second week of January 2022 and proceedings will be done accordingly, thereafter.
Sources reporting to our Cybersecurity Insiders state that the “Group Litigation order” will be served to the staff association for police constables by early next year, as data of over 120,000 police officers could have been leaked through the ransomware attack that took place in March 2019 on the IT systems operating in Surrey Headquarters.
Interestingly, the threat actors not only stole data and then encrypted the database. They also gained access to the backup database and deleted the backed information, making the data recovery impossible.
As the stolen information could be of personal and financial genre, the lawsuit is thinking to seek a hefty compensation as the data storage procedures were in contrary to the existing GDPR obligations of storing and processing data.
Keller Lenkner, one of the experienced law firms, has taken up the matter and will represent the police officers affected by the cyber attack. The company is looking to seek a hefty compensation from PFEW for showing laxity in securing the data of its police officers and pushing them into privacy fears, financial losses, apart from sheer distress.
