London councils probe incident hitting shared IT systems

"The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and Westminster City Council (WCC) confirmed they are investigating an "incident", admitting "we don't have all the answers yet, as the management of this incident is still ongoing." The two local authorities share IT services as part of joint agreements, with the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham also using these shared services."

"According to statements released by all three authorities, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is supporting them with remediation efforts, protecting data, and isolating and restoring systems. At the time of writing, RBKC's website availability is patchy, and the three authorities' statements allude to various services being affected by the cyber incident, including phone lines. Further information posted to the authorities' social media accounts states residents are unable to contact them via phone or online reporting services."

"Both RBKC and WCC say they were forced to invoke business continuity and emergency plans, with additional resources being spent on managing the needs of their most vulnerable residents. Their joint statement on Tuesday said: "At this stage, it is too early to say who did this, and why, but we are investigating to see if any data has been compromised - which is standard practice."

Two London councils, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and Westminster City Council (WCC), plus the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham using shared IT services, are responding to a cybersecurity incident that began on Monday. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is supporting remediation, data protection, and system isolation and restoration. Website availability is patchy and services including phone lines and online reporting are affected, leaving residents unable to contact the councils by phone or online. Both RBKC and WCC invoked business continuity and emergency plans and allocated extra resources to support vulnerable residents. IT teams applied mitigations overnight and are investigating possible data compromise while remaining vigilant.

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