The defense recruiting system, run by the military and outsourcing consultants Capita, was taken down after a data breach reported in March. According to the Guardian, around 130 army recruits have put their stolen data up for sale on the dark web.
A British Army spokesman said at the time: “Following the compromise of a small selection of recruit data, the Army’s online recruitment services have been temporarily suspended pending of an investigation.
“This investigation is now complete, allowing some functionality to be restored and requests to be processed.”
The military kept the system down while an investigation, commissioned by Defense Digital, took place.
Capita, who says the system was not breached, said third-party investigators came to the same conclusion.
The breach is considered an attack on the candidates’ personal computers, with their login credentials targeted, rather than the system’s servers.
But the recruitment system is still not accessible to candidates, even if the site is working again.
The login page displayed a message that the portal was “currently experiencing technical issues” to anyone wishing to submit or review an application.
Capita predicted it would likely be back up and running by the end of the month.
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He added that his son had been trying for a year to join the armed forces.
He said: ‘I applied for reserves over six months ago and heard nothing once the website went down.
“Only now have they sent a letter apologizing and telling me to pay for an eye exam before moving forward with my application.”
The recruitment scheme, first launched four years late in 2018, was part of a controversial decade-long deal with Capita worth £1.3billion.
A report by the MP showed that the Ministry of Defense had invested £113 in the recruitment system and the private sector company had spent a further £60 million to “customise the system to suit the recruitment processes and criteria of services “.
The partnership was heavily anticipated during the early years of the contract, with long wait times for recruits being a common complaint.
But Capita said after a management change in 2018 performance had improved significantly.
A spokesperson for Capita told the Telegraph: “We and the military had publicly acknowledged that the partnership was not working well before, but we have been successful in meeting our recruitment targets for regular soldiers over the past three years, despite the pressures of the pandemic.”
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Source: www.express.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-05-12 10:46:10
