Police Federation pays £15m to officers hit by cyber attack
The Police Federation has paid out £15 million to 19,000 current and former officers who had their personal details compromised and stolen by cyber criminals.
Two huge attacks exposed the home addresses of some officers to hackers six years ago, and in March 2022 the federation admitted liability for unlawfully processing officers' personal details by not having proper protection in place.
The attacks sparked panic among rank and file officers who feared their safety had been compromised.
The federation has admitted that two recently settled group actions 'have had an enormous impact on the finances and assets of the PFEW (Police Federation of England and Wales) and the organisation could not withstand a further claim of this nature'.
Hackers accessed Police Federation systems and encrypted several of its databases during the attacks, making them inaccessible.
Now the organisation, which represents 145,000 rank and file officers, has agreed to settle the claim for £15 million, inclusive of legal and insurance costs.
It had been claimed that the names, email addresses, National Insurance numbers and ranks of around 120,000 police officers had been exposed.
A source said: 'This is a huge settlement. It caused huge concern among rank and file police officers up and down the country.'
The settlement had been revealed by Monckton Chambers, the law firm.
Mukund Krishna, the chief executive officer of the Police Federation, said it was his priority to resolve the two historic action claims that 'hung over the organisation' when he became CEO in July 2023.
He added: 'At the end of last year, we agreed a settlement following the employment tribunal ruling against us regarding pension discrimination.
'I am now pleased to say that we have settled the data protection claims brought against PFEW by just under 20,000 members and former members. This claim followed two separate cyber attacks suffered by the federation over six years ago.
'The federation has taken the pragmatic view that settlement of the litigation is in the best interests of both the federation and its members.
'The negotiation of these settlements has required a huge amount of detailed work but will, collectively, provide the federation with much greater financial certainty going forward. This outcome will also allow PFEW to move on and focus all our efforts on transforming the organisation and serving the membership.'
A total of £15 million will be paid in stages, which covers all 19,159 claims for damages but also includes legal costs, expenses and the costs of insurance cover.
The federation said it did not know how much each claimant would receive from the settlement sum, which is a matter for agreement between the claimants and KP Law, their solicitors.
The organisation acknowledged that with almost 20,000 claims, its potential exposure to damages alone was significantly greater than £15 million. In addition to this, it was exposed to many millions of legal costs – both the claimants' costs and its own.
It added that 'this financial uncertainty represented a very real threat to PFEW and its ability to move forward'.
The federation said it would dispute any further claims that had not been included in the settlement.
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