Councils are a goldmine for cyber criminals due to the vast sensitive data they hold on their constituents. One of the biggest – and still ongoing – cyber attacks happened to Hackney LBC in October 2020. Its legacy on-premise servers and systems were targeted by ransomware, whilst the services it had migrated to the cloud remained safe. But Hackney LBC's hack wasn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last.

Redcar and Cleveland Council sustained a ransomware attack in February 2020, rendering its online services unusable for several weeks and costing the council an estimated £8.4m. In June of the same year, Wealden Council in East Sussex fell victim to a sustained cyber attack, which has yet to finish – hackers are continuously attempting to login to the council’s email system with 3,000 attempts registered in one day at the start of the attack.