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Royal Mail’s international parcel service has ground to a halt following a “cyber incident”, the postal service said on Wednesday, the second such issue it has suffered in recent months.
Royal Mail, which is working with cyber crime authorities, warned customers of “severe disruption” as it told them to temporarily hold items they were planning to send abroad. The group, whose services have already been hit in recent months by strike action, said it was unable to dispatch international packages and that those already in transit may be delayed.
The problems come two months after the group temporarily suspended its “click and drop” website because of a leak that allowed customers on the postage payment platform to see other users’ orders.
The National Cyber Security Centre, which advises UK companies on combating cyber crime, said it was working with the National Crime Agency to understand the impact. Royal Mail declined to confirm publicly if the incident involved hackers, but said it had notified security services and was “working round the clock to resolve this disruption”.
“We would like to sincerely apologise to impacted customers,” the company said.
The incident comes as the formerly state-owned British postal service is locked in a dispute with postal staff over modernisation plans and pay. The group, which is steadily losing market share to more nimble rivals, wants to make changes including greater digitisation and automation.
Strike action by postal workers, which has contributed to the UK’s worst industrial unrest in decades, had already created backlogs at Royal Mail delivery offices in recent weeks, frustrating customers in the lead-up to Christmas.
Hours before the cyber incident was announced, the Communication Workers’ Union, which represents about 115,000 postal workers, confirmed plans for a fresh ballot on strike action, with results to be declared on February 16.
Royal Mail’s management and the CWU, who have failed to reach an agreement on pay and modernisation plans, re-entered negotiations this week through Acas, the conciliation service.
Royal Mail said the cyber incident had affected its electronic clearance system for international deliveries and that post within the UK had not been hit.
It comes amid increasing concern about how well equipped even large businesses are to deal with the cyber threats that have intensified in recent years. On Wednesday, The Guardian also reported that the newspaper had been hit by a ransomware attack, with the personal data of UK staff members accessed.
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Image and article originally from www.ft.com. Read the original article here.