Ill-timed security drill sparks bomb alert at Wolverhampton offices on 7/7
Staff feared a bomb had been planted under an office desk at Wolverhampton's Mander House in an 'ill-timed' security exercise on the 10th anniversary of the 7/7 bombings.
Pensions workers fled after one of them spotted what they assumed was an explosive device under a desk.
The office block houses hundreds of West Midlands Pension Fund workers, as well as staff from the council's City Direct team and work programmes. Bosses say the device was actually being used to detect hacking threats. They have now apologised to staff for causing 'unintentional distress'.
The incident came to light while staff were preparing to observe a minute's silence for the victims of the 7/7 London bombings.
A source told the Express & Star: "A staff member found an A5 sized box with a computer chipboard and a wire underneath the desk. The person was really upset and contacted the IT department but they said they didn't know anything about it. It was the anniversary of 7/7. This was ill-timed, in the height of bad taste and a lot of staff are furious."
Later in the day workers were sent a statement from Geik Drever, strategic director for the West Midlands Pension Fund. It said: "Due to highly sensitive data we hold, it is vital that we ensure our systems are safe and secure.
"We invited in a private network security company to test the vulnerability of those systems to a hacking threat. One of those tests involved attaching a tiny wireless access point, measuring 3ins by 3ins, to an employee's computer without their prior knowledge.
"The point of the exercise was designed to assess how the employee reacted to a hacking risk. The employee did the right thing and alerted management who immediately gathered the team and briefed them that a security exercise had taken place. Subsequently, a number of employees have rightly questioned the appropriateness of holding an exercise of this type on the 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings.
"I apologise unreservedly for the unintentional distress this incident has caused and for the insensitivity we have shown.
"Ensuring the security of the pension fund's systems and data is the right thing to do, but it is clear that we should have taken greater care in checking the format of this exercise and when it took place."
