Fujitsu staff had ‘unrestricted and unauditable’ remote access to Post Office branch systems | Computer Weekly
Summary
Fujitsu had no control over staff in one of its tech support teams accessing Post Office branch accounts remotely to make changes which could be hidden from subpostmasters. Originally from ICL, before its acquisition by Fujitsu, the IT system was rolled out to thousands of Post Office branches, but its introduction led to a sudden increase in subpostmasters reporting unexplained shortfalls in their accounts, for which they were blamed. The existence of unrestricted and unauditable access by Fujitsu staff to accounts would have called into question any accusation that unexplained losses were caused by subpostmaster error or theft. Stephen Parker, a former SCC manager, faced the public inquiry in its current phase, which is investigating the operation of the controversial Horizon system. “This means everybody was aware that this was the requirement and whenever an OCR was approved then they knew of the [process] they needed to do.” Jason Beer, Horizon Inquiry barrister, said: “People are aware of the speed limit – that doesn’t mean they always abide by it, does it?” Parker said: “I agree with you, but I am not aware of any times that members of the SSC did not abide by that rule.” But when asked whether there was an audit or monitoring to see if people accessed the live environment outside of the system outside of the OCR policies, Parker admitted that “ultimately they were trusting [people] to follow the process”.