The Housing Agency has been notified of a cyber incident involving one of the engineering consultant companies that works with the Agency on the DCB Grant Scheme.
As part of the DCB Grant Scheme, the Housing Agency works with chartered engineers from an approved framework to help assess applications. These engineers use technical reports and personal data for contact purposes provided by the applicant in their application to a local authority.
The Housing Agency has been informed that one of the participating engineers, Jennings O’Donovan, experienced a cyber incident affecting its IT systems. The Housing Agency’s systems were not involved. The incident appears to be isolated to one engineering company.
Some files stored on the engineer’s system may have been impacted. While no applicants’ financial or banking information has been impacted, the information that may have been impacted includes applicants’ names, contact details, addresses, dwelling technical reports (including dwelling photos) and local authority DCB application reference numbers.
Following notification of the cyber incident, The Housing Agency has taken a number of steps including:
- Working closely with Jennings O’Donovan to ascertain as much information as possible surrounding the cyber incident
- Working closely with our own IT Department and our external cyber security IT consultants to ensure our IT systems were not breached and remain secure
- Working closely with the Data Protection Officer of the Housing Agency to assess the situation and take the necessary steps
- Notified the Data Protection Commission of the cyber incident
- Notified the other Joint Data Controllers i.e. relevant Local Authorities and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
- Notified other DCB stakeholders to be on high alert for cyber incidents
The Housing Agency is contacting only applicants impacted to advise them of the cyber incident. If applicants have not been contacted they are not impacted by this cyber incident.
No material delays to applications are expected to result from this cyber incident.
