London Borough of Hackney

The London Borough of Hackney was fined for a October 2020 ransomware attack that compromised personal data of a large number of council residents and staff, including housing benefit records, social care information, and sensitive data such as racial and ethnic origin. The ICO found Hackney had failed to patch known software vulnerabilities, had inadequate security monitoring, and had insufficient network segmentation — all of which contributed to the successful attack. The council took over two years to fully restore its systems, significantly disrupting public services.