PSNI Chief Constable to attend emergency policing board meeting after major data breach
Simon Byrne has cut a family holiday short
Last updated 10th Aug 2023
The PSNI's Chief Constable Simon Byrne has cut a family holiday short to return to Belfast for an emergency policing board meeting this morning.
It comes in the wake of a major data breach that has potentially jeopardised the safety of all officers and staff.
Sensitive information, including surnames and employment details was accidentally put online for up to three hours.
Police are treating the breach as a "critical incident" and say they've updated personal security advice to all officers and staff.
Meanwhile a second breach that's now come to light, involves the theft of documents, a laptop, and a police radio from a car in Newtownabbey last month.
The latest statement from Assistant Chief Constable Chris Todd said, “The investigation into the circumstances surrounding yesterday’s significant data breach of personal details of our officers and staff is ongoing.”
"I can confirm that, following a routine Freedom of Information (FoI) request data contained within a spreadsheet was published on a legitimate FoI website.”
“This included the surname, initials, rank/grade, role and location of all serving officers and staff. This data was available to view on the website for a period of up to three hours before it was removed.”
“As a service we are acutely aware of the seriousness of this breach and have declared it to be a critical incident. We fully understand the very real concerns being felt by our colleagues and their families and we are working hard to do everything we can to mitigate any risk.”
“We are working with our security partners and organisations to investigate this incident.”
“We have issued updated personal security advice to all of our officers and staff and have established an emergency threat assessment group that will look at the welfare concerns of our people. As well as general advice on safety and security this multi-disciplinary group will focus on immediate support to those with specific circumstances which they believe place them or their families at immediate risk or increased threat of harm.”
“We have also sought the assistance of an Independent Advisor to conduct an end to end review of our processes in order to understand what happened, how it happened and what we can do immediately to prevent such a breach happening in the future.”
“This is an extremely serious situation. The Chief Constable is cutting his family holiday short and returning to Northern Ireland to attend the special sitting of the Northern Ireland Policing Board. We will continue to keep the Information Commissioner’s Office updated as the investigation continues.”
Today's policing board meeting starts at 10am.
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