Blackpool Council Fends of Cyber attackers

Blackpool Council fights off 21 million cyber attacks every year.

17:53 27 January 2019

A recent security report has revealed that Blackpool Council’s fought a total of 21,164,974 attempts to breach its IT system in the last 12 months.

 

Following the report, experts warned that the threat, which is coming from around the world, is expected to grow as hackers are using more and more sophisticated techniques to steal personal data and disrupt services.

 

Tony Doyle, the council’s head of IT, said: “There is no doubt the cyber threat is growing and in spite of continuing investment and commitment of time and resources, the threats will continue to challenge the council in the future.

 

“We had some technology in place that we were able to use to reduce the impact and we learnt some valuable lessons from that.”

 

Mr Doyle said that the council provides training to all staff members to enable them to recognise rouge emails.

 

He added: “The service has seen increasing evidence of cleverly crafted and personally profiled spear ‘phishing’ emails that even the most savvy end user would be tempted to click on.”

 

“It is essential we continue to invest and develop the council’s cyber defence capabilities to provide adequate assurance in this area.”