Police called to Brolly offices after overnight break in

Police were called to the Brolly offices in Clerkenwell this morning at 8am, where the door had been kicked in.

Staff at the start-up did an audit of missing hardware and found £15,000 of equipment had been stolen.

“For a tech company, that is quite significant,” said CEO Phoebe Hugh, pictured. “Plus having laptops and phones stolen is bad for us, because we need to work and we need to test our app.”

She said after the police had carried out forensic tests on the break-in, the next step was contacting the company’s insurer, Hiscox.

In the meantime, the team started remotely erasing all the stolen devices. Hugh said she didn’t know whether the company was targeted for customer data by a rogue claims firm.

“We don’t know if we were targeted,” she said. “Some business cards were taken as well as some papers as well, which was slightly strange.”

Even so, customer data was fully secure, she said. “Everything is stored and encrypted in the cloud, so there’s no way the data could be retrieved,” she said. “As soon as a device is switched on it will be wiped.”

Despite the hassle, staff were able to begin work again almost immediately, which meant the firm may not need to claim on their business interruption insurance.

“It’s definitely a distraction, but it is business as usual from the customer perspective,” she said. “But for us it’s a bit of a shock.”