Local authorities across the UK are experiencing an average of 10,000 attempted or successful cyber attacks every single day and have seen a 14% year-on-year increase in incidents to over two million so far this year, according to new figures published by Gallagher, a provider of insurance broking and risk management services.
Gallagher lodged Freedom of Information (FoI) requests with every local authority in the country and received information back from 161 of the 333 county councils, district councils and unitary authorities in scope – suggesting the true number of incidents is much, much higher.
The data shows that phishing attacks are by some margin the biggest threat facing local authorities, with 75% of respondents saying these were the most common form of attack – phishing, of course, is generally a precursor to a more impactful incident, such as a ransomware attack. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which have the potential to wreak havoc on local public services by disrupting websites and so on, were the second most common attempt type, and ranked as the top threat for 6% of respondents.
“Criminals unfortunately know only too well that cyber…
