Tech contractors fume over payday outage at Giant Pay after it sniffs 'suspicious activity'
- Reference: 1632486382
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/09/24/giant_pay_outage/
- Source link:
In an update on its website today, the firm said: "Upon detection of suspicious activity on our network on 22nd September 2021, we immediately assembled a response team including IT data experts and specialist lawyers, and we are currently working with the highest priority to resolve this issue.
"As part of the investigation and as a measure of caution, we have proactively taken our systems offline and suspended all services temporarily." It also confirmed it had contacted regulatory authorities and assured contractors they would get paid.
[1]
"As an interim measure, and to ensure that payment is made to your account on 24 September, we will pay you the same amount that was paid to you last week. This will be paid via Faster Pay and will be in your account by the end of the day. As soon as possible, we will confirm that your payroll is back to normal. We appreciate that this is not ideal, but we wanted to ensure that you receive a payment."
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A number of employees – including tech contractors – have contacted The Register fuming at the lack of information from the company in recent days and its failure to respond to emails.
Giant Umbrella has been down "since Tuesday and are failing to pay contractors wages. No phone, no emails and they are failing to respond to webchats," said one, adding: "It’s lucky UK gov didn’t force most contractors to go inside IR35 and need umbrella services. How many contractors have been hit by this and what can they do to get paid?"
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Another Reg reader added that the umbrella company had clearly had "some kind of major outage this week which is affecting a lot of IT contract staff."
Giant Umbrella is a subsidiary of [5]Giant Group PLC , and claims its "long-term clients – since 1992 and ongoing – include Page Group and Barclays Bank."
Until UK lunchtime today, a notice on its portal simply stated: "Portal Downtime. We are experiencing technical difficulties and are working to get them resolved as quickly as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."
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Angry contractors had taken to Twitter.
[7]@giant_group [8]@giantpay1 when will your site be up, so timesheets can be submitted? Phone lines down too! 😳 [9]pic.twitter.com/FUCcxz2t2z — Roger Thelwell (@thelwell_roger) [10]September 23, 2021
A post by someone on Giant Umbrella's Trustpilot page this morning said they had contacted the CFO via LinkedIn, who claimed they're "working to get everyone paid today and will be getting communications out shortly."
However, none of this was confirmed as no one from the company had replied to requests for information. But what little people knew has not gone down well with contractors who rely on Giant Pay for their payroll.
[11]Square-shaped hole in workers' wallets after payment system fails at peak tip time
[12]New Zealand DDoS wave targets banks, post offices, weather forecasters and more
[13]AWS Tokyo outage takes down banks, share traders, and telcos
[14]Pakistan's tax office denies pirated software caused outage – admits it sometimes runs unsupported software
Another said: "Extremely concerned. Their portal has been down all week with no communication. The contact number does not work and I have not been paid! I have been forced to use [an] umbrella service because [of] IR35 and this is a direct consequence. Just not good enough."
A third reported that the organisation where they work has more than a hundred contractors, lamenting: "We haven't been paid, with no prior notification..."
With tempers boiling over, this tweet posted this morning summed up the frustration felt by many:
[15]@giantpay1 How much longer are your systems for contractors going to be down? No portal log-in, no telephone lines working, no response to emails? And more importantly, no payroll!? Any information you can give me would be appreciated. — James (@Cockney_Villa) [16]September 24, 2021
Despite repeated attempts to contact the company, no one from Giant Pay was available for comment at the time of writing. ®
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[5] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/03093787/filing-history
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YU32OjvKq7OBFhgfoeZPcwAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://twitter.com/giant_group?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[8] https://twitter.com/giantpay1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[9] https://t.co/FUCcxz2t2z
[10] https://twitter.com/thelwell_roger/status/1441140813489074179?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/23/square_tip_payment_failure/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/08/new_zealand_ddos_attacks_widespread/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/02/aws_ap_northeast_1_outage/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/26/pakistan_federal_board_of_revenue_software_licensing_snafus/
[15] https://twitter.com/giantpay1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[16] https://twitter.com/Cockney_Villa/status/1441313810195775497?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Sounds like a crack team for dealing with an IT outage
Yeah, the lawyers thing. What the hell are they supposed to be doing at this point in time ? GDPR control to ensure that the IT guys aren't sneaking peeks at payroll data ?
You solve the technical problem, then you bring in the lawyers to sue somebody's pants off.
This is putting the cart before the horse. That rarely works well.
Unless . . . unless the lawyers are already drafting a defense against the sueballs that will be coming their way.
That might be it.
Any reason to delay payments
It took the lot I was with Agency > Umbrella 8 weeks to pay the first payment.
Then another for the second week, any excuse to slow payments down.
They wanted me to issue an invoice, I said no problems as long as you pay the VAT as well.
It seems that Agency was paying from the Netherlands and so was the Umbrella company.
This was too smelly for my liking and I quit, looking for Outside IR35 role only.
Re: Any reason to delay payments
"It took the lot I was with Agency > Umbrella 8 weeks to pay the first payment."
Not this lot, but, that happened with the crowd I was with earlier, and then the agency folded, and along with it the 2 months due from the time I was with the umbrella, and the month before that due to the changeover to IR35, the amount was outstanding from the agency.
I doubt I'll even see even a few pennies in the pound once the liquidator finishes charging their fees into the frozen bank accounts of the agency. This was at the start of the first lockdown/IR35 deadline (which actually got postponed, but the client forced the switch - and the client - "nothing to do with us", in terms of any liabilities - and it's a BIG company - and no government help either
Re: Any reason to delay payments
Slightly annoyed that the agency I contract through pays OutsIde IR35 contractors within 14 days of receipt of funds but pays Inside IR35 contractors 30 days after funds received from the client (which can be 180 days). I am still waiting to be paid fo work done in May 2021.
Update
Looks like there is more to this than meets the eye
"Upon detection of suspicious activity on our network on 22nd September 2021, we immediately assembled a response team including IT data experts and specialist lawyers, and we are currently working with the highest priority to resolve this issue. As part of the investigation and as a measure of caution, we have proactively taken our systems offline and suspended all services temporarily. We are also liaising with regulatory bodies to investigate and remediate the situation. We can confirm that our databases are encrypted.
As an interim measure, and to ensure that payment is made to your account on 24 September, we will pay you the same amount that was paid to you last week. This will be paid via Faster Pay and will be in your account by the end of the day. As soon as possible, we will confirm that your payroll is back to normal. We appreciate that this is not ideal, but we wanted to ensure that you receive a payment.
We apologise for the disruption and appreciate your patience whilst we investigate this matter and work to restore functionality."
https://www.giantpay.co.uk/
Re: Update
Their line of "We can confirm that our databases are encrypted" sounds like weasel words to me as it fails to state WHO encrypted their databases!
Re: Update
Given you need to access your databases on a regular basis, encrypting them is just going to slow things down without improving security in any way.
Re: Update
"We can confirm that our databases are encrypted"
Yes, but were they before the 'suspicious activity'???
Fed up with all this....
Thats the one thing really pissing me off, Absolutley no way of contacting them and no notification from them. Really how hard is it to send an email or at least put a proper notice on their front page!!
It's not just this otage, for the past month at least they have not been replying to any of my requests. They do action them but they never reply to support rquests. What ever happened to being able to actually speak to someone on the other end.
Another case of a company getting too big to actually take care of their customers. We're forced into this situation by IR35, not by choice!
Thanks Boris, I've got the Lube ready for when you want to bend me over some more!!!
They've now changed the wording around payments to "Where possible, an interim payment will be made to you today, 24 September"
What issue though
This has been offline for days now, so what's the actual issue, do we have a serious data breach, are the accounts being raped and pillaged by marauding vikings or just the Hamburgler looking for burger money??? The communication has been non existent. This should be shocking, but alas except for taking their pound of flesh for little service, they have no purpose.
Sounds like they have Giant Problems, can we call that growing pains ?
Sounds like a crack team for dealing with an IT outage
"... we immediately assembled a response team including IT data experts and specialist lawyers,..."