Question reference: S6W-03637
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 11 October 2021
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Current status: Answered by John Swinney on 21 October 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how many cyberattacks have taken place on public bodies in each year since 1999.
Answer
In December 2017, the Scottish Government introduced a cyber incident reporting procedure to notify the Scottish Government, Police Scotland and the National Cyber Security Centre of cyber incidents with the purpose of providing support to affected Scottish public sector bodies.
The Scottish Government cannot confirm the number of incidents prior to 2018 as there was no equivalent process in place encouraging Scottish public sector organisations to report cyber incidents to the Scottish Government.
Table 1. Number of incidents reported to the Scottish Government by the Scottish public sector bodies under the Notifiable Scottish Public Sector Cyber Incidents procedure since 2018
Year | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 up to 13 October
|
Number of incidents reported | 4 | 1 | 11 | 12 |