Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

The Scottish parliament has been hit by a hacking attack this week.

In message to staff on 16 August Holyrood’s chief executive Sir Paul Grice said: "Our security and monitoring systems yesterday identified that the parliament had been targeted in a brute force cyber-attack. Various cyber security measures were quickly deployed to combat this and, as a result, we have seen the frequency of failed log-ins and account lockouts decrease."

"At this point there is no evidence to suggest that the attack has breached our defences and our IT systems continue to be fully operational," he said.

IT staff are working with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and suppliers to put additional security measures in place "to continue to contain the incident and mitigate against any future attacks", Sir Paul said.

"I would also like to thank users across the organisation for their assistance yesterday in strengthening passwords," he said.

The Guardian reported that MSPs and staff at Holyrood were warned hackers were trying to work out their email passwords and access their accounts. Staff were told to update and improve their passwords after IT staff found too many were weak, The Guardian said. 

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