Police Service of Nothern Ireland suffers major data breach affecting thousands of PSNI officers and staff

A major data breach affecting thousands of officers and staff has hit the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

It involves names of officers and civilian workers where they are based, and their roles – including officers working in intelligence.

The data breach was a result of a Freedom of Information request that mistakenly revealed the details.

The Belfast Telegraph reported that the material, featuring 345,000 pieces of data, was wrongly published on the internet.

A spreadsheet published online contained one tab with standard statistical information, but the second tab contained entries relating to 10,000 individuals – including every officer’s service number, last name and initials, status, rank, gender, contract type, and hours of work each week.

The breach does not include any private addresses.

PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Chris Todd told media in Belfast on Tuesday night that he understood the breach would be of “considerable concern”.

He added: “We operate in an environment at the moment where there’s a severe threat to our colleagues from Northern Ireland-related terrorism and this is the last thing that anybody in the organisation wants to be hearing this evening.”

The breach would be investigated “thoroughly”, he said. “The information was taken down very quickly, but nevertheless, I do appreciate the concern, of course we will seek to find the extent to which that has been viewed.

“What I would say is that although the error was our own, once that information was out there if anybody did have access to it, I would ask them to delete it straight away.”

Mr Todd confirmed the error occurred through a Freedom of Information request, and that it revealed the surname, initial, rank or grade, location and departments for each of our current employees across the police service.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has been notified about the incident. An ICO spokesperson said: “The Police Service of Northern Ireland has made us aware of an incident and we are assessing the information provided.”

Alliance Party leader and former justice minister Naomi Long told PA news agency that the scale of the data breach was of “profound concern”.

Additional reporting by PA News Agency.