Council chiefs vow to battle against cyber crooks rise

800 per cent increase in attacks on local authority

Cyber criminals are targeting private information about thousands of families living in Renfrewshire, it can be revealed.

Gangs are bombarding council computers with viruses and malicious emails in a bid to extort taxpayers’ cash to keep the files safe.

Local authority bosses say they were spammed with 400,000 online messages, with only 11 per cent from legitimate sources.

They admit ransomware attacks have gone up by 800 per cent in the last year.

A Renfrewshire Council spokesman said: “Like every other UK public sector agency, the council is the target of coordinated, sustained and targeted cyber attacks.

“Cyber security and cyber resilience are a continuing high priority for the council.

“We employ robust digital defences to combat any ransomware, or virus software, which is potentially harmful to the organisation.

“The council uses state-of-the-art digital defences, along with other non-digital security practices which are aligned to UK Government guidelines, and those from the UK National Cyber Security Centre, to provide a holistic defence in depth degree of protection against cyber attacks.

“The nature of cyber threats changes regularly, so these measures are frequently reviewed and updated to maintain effectiveness, and are regularly tested and audited by independent organisations against UK Government approved ICT health check schemes.

“Combined, this pro-active approach helps us to maintain a collection of robust holistic defences.”

Renfrewshire Council chiefs say firewalls and email filters do a “good job” stopping dangerous messages and files from getting through.

But they say the huge scale of spam messages which lead to viruses and cyber attacks is “significant”.

In one five-week period, the local authority received 2.14million communications, of which 84 per cent were blocked.

Less than 12 per cent of all emails sent to public sector workers are from legitimate contacts.

The council has also warned against insider threats from rogue staff members.

They provide sensitive information, cash or supplies to crooks, or sabotage projects from their position within the organisation.

As previously revealed in the Express, the local authority was forced to splash out almost £200,000 to protect itself from cyber attacks last year.

Hackers forced bosses to double spending on online protection in the last five years due to sustained targeting of the public sector.

A ransomware virus brought down NHS systems in May, resulting in thousands of cancelled appointments and the closure of A&E departments.

It is believed a North Korean statesponsored group may have been behind the health board attack.

Last year, we told how Councillor Kenny MacLaren stumbled on an Asian porn site advertising sexual services from prostitutes, swingers and rent boys on the local authority’s inhouse intranet network.

It is unclear whether the link was a security breach or simply a bad link.

The Fraud Advisory Panel charity warns organisations, firms and families are all at-risk from online crooks.

A spokesman said: “In its simplest form cybercrime typically refers to any criminal activity in which computers or computer networks are the origin, tool, object or place of the crime.

“The sheer complexity of the underlying networked technology often makes these crimes fiendishly difficult to tackle.

“Attackers can strike unseen, whether their victims are thousands of miles away or just round the corner.

“Organisations of all types and sizes can fall victim to fraud – from the smallest enterprise to the largest multinational conglomerate.

“Never respond to unsolicited emails asking you to update your personal, business or account information, or open any zip files attached to them, delete them.”