Dear member of Student Union SAMMAKKO
During the night of Monday and Tuesday of last week, 21-22 October 2024, the network and database servers of Hakosalo Innovations Ltd, the provider of our membership register, have been compromised.
After discovering the data breach, the membership registry provider took action with their service provider and they were able to stop the data breach and raise the security levels. The incident has been reported to Traficom’s Cyber Security Centre and the Data Protection Officer, and a criminal complaint has also been filed.
Hakosalo Innovations Ltd, which maintains our membership register, i.e. is the processor of personal data in the SAMMAKKO student union’s membership register, has investigated the incident in cooperation with its service provider and ensured that no data has been uploaded to external servers. Although the attack temporarily rendered the registry data unusable, most of the data was restored from backups, but updates made to the registry during the attack were lost. These updates in this period include new membership, membership renewal and casting votes in the Representatives’ Election electoral system.
If you suspect that your membership has not been updated, you can contact our customer service via email service@sammakko.fi.
If you suspect that your vote in the Representatives’ Elections has not been registered, you can check this by clicking again on the voting link which you have received before. If the link no longer works, your vote has been successfully registered. If the link works, you can vote again. The disruption in the electoral system will not compromise the result of the vote, nobody will be able to vote twice and voting functions normally.
Hakosalo Innovations Ltd is a nationwide provider of membership registration services. In addition to the SAMMAKKO student union, the services are also used by a number of other organisations. The data breach has not targeted any individual actors.
The supplier has taken steps to improve security to prevent similar situations from occurring again.
We apologize for what happened and thank you for your understanding in this situation.
For further information on what happened, please contact the provider:
Petri Hakosalo
Petri Hakosalo, CEO
040 591 5668
petri.hakosalo@hakosaloinnovations.fi
Hakosalo Innovations Oy
www.hakosaloinnovations.fi