Royal Mail ‘cyber-incident’ hits overseas post

Royal Mail says it is unable to send letters and parcels overseas following a “cyber-incident”.

The delivery firm is telling customers to stop sending items overseas while it tries to resolve the issue.

Royal Mail said there were also minor delays to post coming into the UK, but domestic deliveries are unaffected.

It apologised and said its teams were “working around the clock to resolve this disruption” and would update customers when it had more information.

Royal Mail is understood to be calling it a “cyber-incident” rather than a cyber attack because it does not know what has caused the problem.

Its computerised systems for sending letters and parcels abroad had been “severely disrupted”, it said.

“We immediately launched an investigation into the [cyber] incident and we are working with external experts,”

The National Cyber Security Centre, which is part of the UK’s cyber intelligence agency GCHQ, is involved in trying to work out what has happened, alongside the National Crime Agency.

Regulators have also been told of the incident.

Details are often scarce when it comes to cyber incidents, but Royal Mail is being especially vague about what is happening inside its international mail centres.

The company has called in the National Cyber Security Centre and the Information Commissioners Office, which are the bodies you’d usually call if there’s a cyber attack – the NCSC for help, and the ICO because you have to inform them of any potential data theft.

But Royal Mail has also called the National Crime Agency, which suggests the incident might have a different angle to it.

They are also being careful not to call it a cyber-attack, which opens up the possibility that it might be a large scale technical glitch, or even some sort of sabotage to the system.

Either way it seems to be a major incident with far-reaching effects as the backlog of packages builds up.

There have been a number of high-profile cyber-security incidents in recent weeks in the UK.

The Twitter accounts of two Cabinet ministers have been hacked, and the Guardian newspaper was hit with a suspected ransomware attack.

In the year to March, Royal Mail sent 152 million parcels abroad which equates to around 200,000 items a day.

However, that was a small fraction of the number of parcels it sent domestically.

Royal Mail has faced a number of challenges over the past year, including a series of strikes by postal workers as part of a long-running dispute over pay and conditions.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents more than 115,000 postal workers at Royal Mail, is planning further industrial action, with a fresh ballot due to open later this month.