A small rural council in the North of England has suffered a staggering financial hit in recovering from a cyberattack. Redcar and Cleveland in Yorkshire were forced to spend £10 million in order to recover from a cyberattack which took online public services offline for a week in February.
Infrastructure and system recovery cost £2.4m, and individual council directorates needed £3.4 in recovery funds. This is a very significant number for a local council, already chronically underfunded and seeing its services stretched to breaking point by the pandemic. The NCSC has placed the council on a data-sharing pilot programme moving forward, which may help them to gain more detailed knowledge of security protocol and help them to be better prepared for security incidents in the future.