SLR Consulting Limited, which helps its clients to achieve their sustainability goals, has written to its employees, both past and present, to inform them of a data breach involving their personal data.
The company, which employs staff across 20 different UK locations, became aware of the data breach on the 28th February 2021.
The data breach, which occurred when an unauthorised third party accessed SLR Consulting’s IT systems, involved employees’ personal data being copied by hackers.
The employee data that was breached included their: name, date of birth, gender, address, telephone number, salary, benefit information, emergency contact details, national insurance number, health or disability information, passport, driving license, visa status and birth certificate where shared for either employment or business travel purposes.
Owing to the sensitive nature of the data breach, and the risk of identity theft, SLR Consulting is now offering those affected a twelve-month subscription to Equifax Protect, a free fraud scanning service. They’re also advising staff, both past and present, to take additional security measures including resetting their passwords for corporate and personal services used on corporate devices.
Commenting on the SLR Consulting data breach, Mark Montaldo, a director who specialises in data breaches at CEL Solicitors, said: “Employers must take note, we’re seeing an upward trend in employee data breaches owing to the sensitive nature of information held by businesses.
“It’s imperative that company’s do everything in their power to protect employees who could be made vulnerable if their data gets into the wrong hands. We would urge those affected by the SLR Consulting data breach to remain vigilant, monitoring their back accounts and credit file for suspicious activity.
“They should also beware of scammers posing as trusted organisations. Given the data that was breached it would be very easy for the hackers to set up sophisticated phishing scams to dupe the unsuspecting victims out of their hard-earned cash.”
