From Disruption to Resilience: Cyber Security Lessons in Social Housing
The UK social housing sector has repeatedly demonstrated its attractiveness to cyber criminals.
A combination of high volumes of sensitive tenant data held across the sector, paired with the often-prolonged disruption caused by potential breaches/cyber incidents to essential services such as social housing has made housing associations and local councils a top target for cyber crime. By examining recent real-world incidents affecting Clarion Housing Association, Connexus Housing, and Hackney Council, we can extract key lessons to strengthen cyber resilience as we look to the year ahead.
Clarion Housing Association: Major Disruption & Operational Impact
What Happened?
In June 2022, one of the UK’s largest housing associations, Clarion Housing Group - serving more than 350,000 residents across 125,000 homes - suffered a significant cyber incident that severely disrupted IT systems, phone lines, and online services.
Systems used for repairs, rent enquiries, and resident support were rendered unavailable for several months, as the organisation worked to rebuild and restore core infrastructure. The incident’s operational impact extended far beyond IT, hindering residents’ ability to pay rent, submit repair requests, and access vital communications.
How It Happened?
While specific technical details were not publicly disclosed, the attack caused widespread outages across critical platforms, illustrating the consequences of a successful breach in an environment with limited segmentation and dependency on centralised systems. Clarion’s CRM reportedly remained unaffected, suggesting the attack was focused on operational systems rather than outright data theft.
Remediation & Recovery:
Clarion enlisted incident response specialists and worked to prioritise system restoration in phases. Communications to residents were eventually centralised through temporary channels and updates, but delays in transparent updates contributed to tenant frustration and heightened phishing activity targeting residents.
The association acknowledged that rebuilding systems securely was complex and time-consuming, highlighting the importance of pre-planned recovery workflows and tested backups.
Lessons for 2026:
Incident Transparency: Early, clear communication with stakeholders helps reduce confusion and mitigates the risk of scam follow-ups.
Segmentation & Redundancy: Operational systems should be segmented from core resident data platforms to contain impact.
Backup Validation: Regular, verified offline backups reduce recovery time from large-scale outages.
Connexus Housing: Unauthorised Access & Uncertainty
What Happened?
In December 2023, Connexus; a rural housing group serving communities in Shropshire and Herefordshire, experienced a cyber incident involving unauthorised access to its systems. This attack forced the association to take multiple IT services offline and draw immediate attention from regulators.
While Connexus managed to isolate affected systems quickly, it was unable to definitively confirm that customer data had not been compromised, which prompted a formal warning to customers about increased scam risk.
How It Happened?
Public disclosures framed the incident as “unauthorised access” rather than a specific ransomware or malware event. This suggests the threat may have resulted from compromised credentials, remote access weakness, or lateral movement enabled through insecure perimeter controls - all common vectors across the sector.
Remediation & Recovery:
Connexus took its systems offline as a containment measure and notified both the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the Regulator of Social Housing -demonstrating adherence to regulatory reporting requirements. Customers received guidance on vigilance against phishing and scam communications.
Lessons for 2026:
Assume Data Exposure: When containment occurs, treat all access as potentially compromised until proven otherwise and warn stakeholders early.
Credential Hygiene: Strong authentication, session monitoring, and rapid credential revocation are critical to stopping access abuse.
Regulatory Preparedness: Early engagement with regulators and established reporting playbooks speed compliance and support mitigation
Hackney Council: Ransomware, Encryption & Long-Term Operational Consequences
What Happened?
Incidents impacting social housing are not limited to associations. In October 2020, Hackney Council in London suffered a severe ransomware attack that encrypted approximately 440,000 files, affecting council housing benefits, social care, and land charge services used by around 280,000 residents.
The attack not only disrupted operational systems for weeks; key services remained impacted formany months, illustrating how cyber incidents can cascade across essential public services.
How It Happened?
The ICO’s investigation found root causes in inadequate patch management, the exploitation of an unsecured dormant account, and insufficient technical and organisational security measures.
Notably, attackers managed to delete part of the council’s backups before detection - hampering recovery efforts and amplifying operational impact.
Remediation & Recovery:
In the years following the attack, Hackney Council undertook:
A significant business continuity programme prioritising critical services
A replacement of key housing management IT systems to modernise architecture
Service restoration through manual workarounds, spreadsheets, and stand-alone systems while new systems were developed and deployed
Despite years passing, some legacy effects persisted, demonstrating that remediation is more than just a simple IT fix, and instead an extended strategic programme.
Lessons for 2026:
Patch & Asset Management: Unpatched systems and dormant access paths are low-effort targets with high impact.
Backup Integrity: Backups must be both secure and isolated from systems reachable by attackers.
Modernisation Investment: Recovery is not just about returning to the status quo - it often requires long-term investment in modern systems and continuity planning.
What These Incidents Reveal About Cyber Risk Within Social Housing
Taken together, the incidents affecting Clarion Housing Association, Connexus Housing, and Hackney Council highlight a consistent and concerning pattern across the social housing sector. While the technical details vary, the underlying weaknesses exploited by attackers are strikingly similar - and largely preventable.
First, these cases demonstrate that operational disruption is often the most damaging outcome, not just data loss. In each incident, residents experienced delayed repairs, broken communication channels, inaccessible services, and prolonged uncertainty. For housing providers delivering essential services, cyber incidents can quickly become tenant welfare issues, reputational risks, and regulatory concerns rather than isolated IT failures.
Second, identity-based compromise and unauthorised access continue to be central attack vectors. Whether through compromised credentials, dormant accounts, or weak authentication controls, attackers repeatedly gain initial access without deploying sophisticated malware. This reinforces the reality that perimeter defences alone are insufficient - identity is now the primary battleground.
Third, backup and recovery readiness remains inconsistent across the sector. Hackney’s experience in particular illustrates how attackers deliberately target backup systems to prolong disruption and increase leverage. Without isolated, tested recovery processes, organisations are forced into extended outages and costly rebuilds.
Finally, these incidents show how communication gaps during cyber events amplify downstream risk. Where residents are unclear about what has happened, attackers quickly exploit the confusion with follow-on phishing, impersonation, and scam campaigns, thus compounding the original incident and expanding the associated risk exponentially.
Strengthening Housing Association Cyber Security: Practical, Actionable Measures
Learning from these incidents means moving beyond high-level principles and embedding security into day-to-day housing operations. The following measures represent practical, achievable steps that materially reduce risk and improve resilience.
1. Make Identity and Access Security a Core Control
Housing associations manage complex user environments - including staff, contractors, repairs teams, third-party suppliers, and temporary access accounts. This creates fertile ground for credential abuse if identity controls are not tightly governed.
Key actions include enforcing phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication across all privileged and remote access, routinely reviewing and removing dormant accounts, and applying least-privilege access to housing management systems. Continuous monitoring of account behaviour is essential to detect anomalous activity early, before attackers can escalate privileges or move laterally.
2. Reduce Blast Radius Through Network Segmentation
One of the clearest lessons from large-scale outages is the danger of having flat, interconnected environments. When attackers compromise a single system, the lack of segmentation allows disruption to spread rapidly across repairs platforms, finance systems, contact centres, and internal communications.
Housing providers should prioritise segmenting core operational systems, isolating backups from production networks, and separating resident-facing services from internal administration platforms. This limits the scope of impact even when a breach occurs and enables faster, more controlled recovery.
3. Treat Backup and Recovery as a Live Capability
Backups are only effective if they are secure, isolated, and regularly tested. Organisations should maintain a combination of online and offline backups, protected by separate credentials and inaccessible from standard user accounts.
Equally important is testing restoration under pressure. Recovery exercises should simulate realistic ransomware or system-wide outage scenarios to validate recovery time objectives and ensure teams understand their roles when systems are unavailable.
4. Prepare for Incidents - Not Just Prevention
Every organisation should assume that a cyber incident will occur at some point. Preparedness is what determines whether it becomes a contained disruption or a prolonged crisis.
This includes maintaining a documented, board-approved incident response plan that covers technical containment, regulatory notification, and resident communications. Tabletop exercises should be run regularly to test decision-making, escalation paths, and coordination with external responders. Clear communication plans help reduce confusion, protect tenants from scams, and preserve trust during recovery.
5. Strengthen Third-Party and Supply Chain Oversight
Housing associations are increasingly relying on external IT providers, cloud platforms, repairs contractors, and shared services - all of which introduce additional, third-party risk.
Supplier security assessments, contractual breach notification requirements, and ongoing monitoring of third-party access are critical. Organisations should understand exactly which vendors can access tenant data or operational systems, and ensure those relationships are governed accordingly.
6. Embed Governance and Accountability at Board Level
Cyber security failures increasingly attract regulatory scrutiny, reputational damage, and long-term operational consequences. Effective governance requires clear board-level ownership of cyber risk, supported by regular reporting on threat exposure, incident readiness, and control effectiveness.
Aligning cyber security programmes with recognised frameworks such as Cyber Essentials, IASME Cyber Assured, or ISO 27001 provides structure, accountability, and measurable improvement over time.
Find out more about our dedicated housing sector cyber security services:
Missed our recent housing sector webinar? Watch the full recording now.
Exploring a real-world cyber attack timeline, the barriers organisations face when building resilience, and the clear steps housing providers can take to strengthen their defences from an insider perspective.
An insightful session featuring exclusive housing sector insights from Nigel Lee, Head of ICT at Cardiff Community Housing Association (CCHA), alongside PureCyber CEO, Damon Rands.
How PureCyber Can Help
Housing associations need a cyber security partner that understands the operational realities of the sector - from safeguarding sensitive tenant data and maintaining essential services, to navigating complex governance requirements and regulatory expectations. PureCyber has a proven track record of supporting UK housing associations through real-world cyber incidents, recovery programmes, and long-term resilience initiatives.
We provide a comprehensive, fully managed approach to cyber security, acting as an extension of your organisation and removing the operational burden from internal teams. Our services include 24/7 UK-based Security Operations Centre (SOC) coverage, MXDR (Managed Extended Detection & Response), Threat Exposure Management and brand protection services, incident response, penetration testing, and third-party risk assessment and cyber security audits.
By combining deep housing sector experience with advanced detection, real-time threat intelligence, and human-led response, PureCyber helps housing providers move from reactive defence to measurable cyber resilience - protecting tenant data, maintaining service continuity, and strengthening organisational trust. As an NCSC Assured Service Provider, we also support housing associations with governance and compliance consultancy and audits, including Cyber Essentials, ISO 27001, FISMA, and SOC 1 & SOC 2 standards.
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