Another brand under the Optionis Group, SJD Accountancy, has also been hit by cybercriminals. Earlier today, we wrote an article about a similar threat faced by Nixon Williams – contractor accountants within the Optionis Group. Here is what we know.
Two Optionis brands, Parasol (umbrella company) and Nixon Williams (contractor accountant) have already alerted clients about breaches to their networks. Now, another Optionis Group brand, SJD Accountancy, has also released a statement regarding a “recently suffered a cyber security” threat resulting in downtime to SJD Online – accountancy software for SJD clients.
Security threats have hit the umbrella and contractor accountancy industry hard over the last few months. Last year, Giant Pay, a leading UK-based umbrella company, was subjected to a severe security breach. And earlier in 2022, Brookson was also hit by a cyber security threat.
The contractor payroll industry is definitely being targeted, and it’s worrying.
SJD Accountancy is working with the “support of external IT security specialists”
In a statement released on 18th January 2020, SJD Accountancy said:
“SJD Accountancy has recently suffered a cyber security incident that impacted some of our key systems and caused significant disruption to our services. As soon as we identified the issue, we immediately took action to mitigate its impact with the support of external IT security specialists and are working round the clock to minimise disruption to our services and resume normal operations.
While we are still in the early stages of our investigations, based on our current understanding of the incident there is no evidence that personal data has been removed from our system. We will provide an update on our investigation when we have more information to share, but we have been informed by our external advisors that this could take a number of weeks.
In the meantime, to ensure the safety and integrity of your data, we have suspended our systems and you will be unable to access SJD Online.
– You can email your accountant directly or email our central inbox at cloudsupport@sjdaccountancy.com.
– You can connect with us via LiveChat by clicking the speech bubble at the bottom right of the screen
– You can call us on 01442 353457 between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday – if we are unable to answer your call immediately, you will receive a call back the same day.”
Best of luck to SJD Accountancy and all impacted clients
Our thoughts are with everyone at SJD Accountancy and all the affected clients. Our fingers are crossed that this security threat can be dealt with efficiently and without impacting SJD’s operations and internal systems. Hopefully, everything will return to normal, and clients can access the portal without any complications.
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