Minutes:
The Chairman invited Owen Pritchard, Programme Manager Cyber-Security, to introduce his update.
Owen gave a confidential presentation on the current cyber threats faced by councils, including recent ‘testing’ results from councils on their preparedness for rebuffing cyber attacks. Owen ran through the LGA’s support offer to councils and finished by highlighting a list of 10 key questions that councillors should be asking their council officers in relation to cyber-preparedness.
Members’ comments and questions:
· Councils hold a large amount of confidential information on vulnerable residents. How can this best be isolated from other non-confidential information? Owen introduced the concept of ‘segmentation’ as a way of increasing data security and said that councils should have systems in place to ensure this happens. He added that it was important that councils tightly manage the amount of privileges granted in relation to confidential data.
· Members felt that the proliferation of partnership working in recent years and the need to share data with these partners, made systems more vulnerable. Similarly, it was considered that the wider transfer of data systems online increased the risk of breaches enormously. Owen acknowledged that both of these factors increased risks for all organisations and emphasised the crucial need for ever greater vigilance on the part of councils and for having the appropriate systems in place to counter the threat.
· There was generally a ‘monoculture’ of operating systems and software within councils – was this likely to increase their vulnerability to attack and should they therefore try and diversify the products used? Owen said that there was always a tension between resilience and efficiency in IT systems which councils needed to assess objectively.
Owen concluded the session by highlighting the information on the LGA website and said that he would be more than happy to talk to councillors or council officers individually to provide further guidance. He agreed to circulate the 10 questions for a councillor to ask in the next Chairman’s bulletin.
Decision:
Councillors’ Forum noted the update.