Contents:
GiantPay, the UK umbrella payroll enterprise has recently confirmed being a victim of a complex cyberattack. The GiantPay cyberattack is referred to as “sophisticated”.
The GiantPay Cyberattack: More Details
The GiantPay cyberattack took place last week, on the 22nd of September Wednesday. Its consequences made the big company, Giant Group aka Giant Pay close its network down, these including:
- E-mail systems
- Phone systems
- IT infrastructure
The impact of the attack prevented IT contractors last week from contacting the enterprise or finalizing tasks related to payroll.
Giant Group was the victim of a sophisticated cyber-attack on September 22nd. International law firm Crowell & Moring immediately put in place a team of experts in the US, UK, and Brussels who have been carrying out necessary steps as part of the ongoing investigation. Together, we continue to work with our insurers, the ICO, and the NCA on the investigation, alongside a number of other specialist advisers.
The enterprise motivated its delay in giving more details about what happened because of the reason that they expected the right time to be safe to provide updates.
If questions like who is behind or is it a ransomware attack come to one’s mind, they will remain without an answer for the moment as it’s still not confirmed who is the author and the company did not comment on the topic of ransomware involvement.
According to the Register, there are still some payment-related issues which the company has hopes to solve by the end of the week.
Due to these reasons, more than 8000 contractors received interim payments from the company. These contractors are usually remunerated through the payroll service provider for their performing work for other enterprises. There is no confirmation on the fact if everyone entitled was paid or received their entire payment.
The company also declared in regards to this GiantPay cyberattack that:
Although we had no portals to operate from, we managed to pay over 8,000 workers last week. We appreciate that not everyone would have received their expected payment and for that we are sincerely sorry. We are aiming to be able to process your payroll and pay you by Friday.
However, contractors seem to be dissatisfied with the lack of communication. One of them stated that they were waiting for the 24th September payment, as then payments should have been processed, and said that the company did not inform about any delay, only later got to know the message posted on Friday evening on their website.
This is now really frustrating. Like everyone else, I was waiting to get paid on 24th September [when it had promised to process payments], but I did not receive any communication from them that this won’t happen. It was later in the evening on Friday that I saw the message on their website. Now, this is Monday evening 27th Sept, we still haven’t received any form of communication from Giant Pay, neither have they updated us on what exactly is going on.
Today, the Register publication received some updates regarding this matter from the Freelancer & Contractor Services Association (FCSA):
The FCSA is liaising with FCSA member firm Giant to ensure that the recent IT issues are fully resolved. We are assured that Giant are fully focused on ensuring that every contractor receives the money they are owed and that any disruption due to these IT issues are minimised for both the contractor and agencies involved. Giant is working around the clock to rectify the matter and will update all parties at every stage of the recovery process.
Other Updates on the Company’s Website
Following the Giant Pay cyberattack, the company added today some other updates on their website:
- They said that the reason for the late communication was to first protect the integrity of the investigation, apologizing for the inconvenience.
- They say that portals are working.
- Payments for any timesheet that was not covered last week are said to be carried through by Friday.
- The portal might still have some technical issues, but there’s an available support team ready to help through the portal, live chat, and phone.
- For any other info, users should visit giantpay.co.uk and www.giantgroup.com.
Hi! My name is Andra and I am a passionate writer interested in a variety of topics. I am curious about the cybersecurity world and what I want to achieve through what I write is to keep you curious too!
