Costs Of The Cyber Attack On Gloucester City Keeps Going Up

The cost of the cyber attack which hit Gloucester City Council has risen to £787,000 so far and civic chiefs cannot rule out it will top £1 million. Benefit payments, planning applications and house sales were delayed after the City’s IT systems were compromised in December.

The Council became aware that its IT systems had been affected on 20 December last year. Since then, the council's online revenue and benefits, planning and customer services have been affected.

The city authority had to rebuild all of its servers after malware infected its systems and officers have been restoring services but costs keep rising. The harmful software was embedded in an email which had been sent to a council officer. Known as sleeper malware, it is understood to have been dormant for some time before it was activated.

• Liberal Democrat group leader Jeremy Hilton asked councillors on 29 September how much it had cost so far to restore the IT systems and what the estimated final bill would be. "Every time I ask the question about the costs of the cyber attack recovery, the cost rises more and more. It now stands at a whopping £787,000... Can you reassure members of the council that the final bill will not be more than £1m?"

• The Conservative Deputy leader of the council Hanna Norman said that all parties involved in the recovery were doing it in the most cost effective manner because they were spending Gloucester taxpayers' money. "I can give you the assurance that every penny we spend is scrutinised and we are making decisions based on value for money and what is right operationally for this authority and therefore Gloucester residents." She confirmed the council had spent £787,000 spent to date, of which £142,000 went on capital works.

Following the attack, Gloucester City Council confirmed that its expert sources believe that  the cyber attack was carried out by hackers from Russia.

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