Councils face a number of shortcomings when it comes to their cyber security perceptions, according to research published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
The report, which interviewed 163 local authorities across England on ransomware and is part of a pre-discovery exercise, was motivated by a need to understand how central government can reduce risk and optimise spending in support of, and collaboration with, local authorities.
An inconsistent view of what cyber security means to a council is one of the research findings, with respondents having difficulty to provide uniform definitions of what constitutes a breach, for example. That is despite 37 attempted breaches of UK local authorities occurring every minute, according to the Big Brother Watch report also cited in the study.
“What good cyber health and maintaining good cyber health looks like is unclear,” the report said. “Cyber security means different things to different people.”
According to the report, stakeholders felt that information management is separate to cyber security, even though the National Cyber Security Strategy includes information management. There is…
