Council’s ‘controls stopping hackers’

COUNCILLORS in the town home to Britain’s brightest cyber-security experts fear attacks from overseas hackers.

Cheltenham borough councillors have warned of the risks posed by cyber attacks from foreign powers which could lead to local services being shut down.

Councillors discussed instances where hackers have successfully targeted local authorities at Thursday night’s audit, compliance and governance committee meeting.

Last year, a cyber attack on Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council’s website and computers cost more than £10 million and around 135,000 people were without online public services.

An attack targeting Hackney Council caused IT issues which affected services including the processing of land search requests.

A recent audit report suggests Cheltenham Borough Council is well prepared and has good technical controls to prevent such attacks. However, auditors say that it is still possible for a malware attack to be successful.

Councillor Flo Clucas said Hackney Council had enormous difficulty in getting the services back to normal. She asked officials if they were aware of any similar incidents affecting Cheltenham, the Gloucestershire town home to GCHQ.

“We’ve heard recently of activity by foreign powers, some of which have resulted in organisations being dropped for example, not having access, being shut down,” she said. “Have we seen any of that happening here that perhaps we should be aware of?”

She added: “The more we know about this, the safer we as an organisation, our officers who work here, and the people who live in Cheltenham and the businesses we have will be.”

She asked for officers to compile a report about potential problems cyber attacks could cause to be shared with councillors.

Officers said they were not aware of any issues locally and said the council has systems in place to prevent such situations.

Executive director of people and change Darren Knight said: “The reality is we are being attacked constantly and it’s the controls we’ve got in place that is why we have not succumbed to some of the more distinguished things that are in the press at the moment. We have a copy of the Redcar incident. Obviously, we will take lessons learned from that and report to members.”

Chairman Guy Maughfling said there are cyber attacks occurring every day all over the world. “There are literally hundreds of them going on. To date we have the right processes and controls to prevent those attacks from being successful.”