{"id":209103,"date":"2026-02-02T07:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/02\/scottish-council-had-gaps-in-cybersecurity-prior-to-cyber-attack\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T08:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T13:25:07","slug":"scottish-council-had-gaps-in-cybersecurity-prior-to-cyber-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/02\/scottish-council-had-gaps-in-cybersecurity-prior-to-cyber-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottish council had &#8220;gaps in cybersecurity&#8221; prior to cyber-attack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.digit.fyi\/scottish-council-had-gaps-in-cybersecurity-prior-to-cyber-attack\/\">Scottish council had &#8220;gaps in cybersecurity&#8221; prior to cyber-attack<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.digit.fyi\/scottish-council-had-gaps-in-cybersecurity-prior-to-cyber-attack\/\">https:\/\/www.digit.fyi\/scottish-council-had-gaps-in-cybersecurity-prior-to-cyber-attack\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-02 07:45:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.digit.fyi\">www.digit.fyi<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new report reveals that a Scottish council may have had \u201cgaps\u201d in their cybersecurity arrangements ahead of a sophisticated and significant cyber-attack.<\/p>\n<p>Comhairle nan Eilan Siar faced a cyber-attack two years ago, which had an immediate impact on the council and nearly caused the complete loss of the council\u2019s data.<\/p>\n<p>The ransomware attack was carried out through malware installed on the council\u2019s services, which was used to steal and encrypt vital data. The attack continues to \u201chave a significant impact on its operations,\u201d the Account Commission said.<\/p>\n<p><img class=\"lazyload\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.digit.fyi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/DIGIT.FYI-In-Article-Ads-750-x-210-px.jpg?fit=1200%2C338&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"FS Technology Summit 2026\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The new report from the Account Commission reveals that, while Comhairle nan Eilean Siar did \u201cescalate the issue appropriately\u201d when it discovered the attack, there were \u201cgaps in their cyber security, business continuity, and disaster recovery arrangements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the report conceded that more robust controls may not have prevented the attack, \u201cstronger controls may have helped to reduce its impact or improve the speed of detection and response.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Currently, the council is still experiencing the consequences of the attack, and while progress has been made, key systems still need to be rebuilt.<\/p>\n<p>The full cost of the attack has been estimated, but does not include the time burden on staff as well as the continued rebuild.<\/p>\n<h4><strong>Recommended reading<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>As part of the review, the audit provided some recommendations that Comhairle and other public sector bodies should take heed of.<\/p>\n<p>This includes reviewing IT infrastructure to ensure it is resilient and meets disaster recovery standards, cyber testing and disaster recovery exercises are conducted regularly, staff are trained regularly, and the capacity and capability of the IT teams match the IT department\u2019s resilience needs.<\/p>\n<p>This incident highlights the importance of robust cyber security safeguards,\u201d the report concluded. \u201cNo organisation can fully mitigate the risk of the ever increasing threat and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.digit.fyi\/scottish-council-had-gaps-in-cybersecurity-prior-to-cyber-attack\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scottish council had &#8220;gaps in cybersecurity&#8221; prior to cyber-attack https:\/\/www.digit.fyi\/scottish-council-had-gaps-in-cybersecurity-prior-to-cyber-attack\/ Publish Date: 2026-02-02 07:45:00 Source&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":209104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.digit.fyi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Untitled-design-2026-02-02T123101.644.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[32,57],"class_list":["post-209103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-malware","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209105,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209103\/revisions\/209105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}