The local authority of the Western Isles has revealed data stored on its operational and back-up servers cannot be accessed after it suffered a cyber-attack two weeks ago.
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar suffered the attack on Tuesday November 7, with investigations ongoing by a team led by Police Scotland, the National Security Centre and the Scottish Government.
Working alongside the comhairle’s IT team, they have been able to access the comhairle’s servers but have not been able to access the stored data.
The local authority has said it will continue to engage with and seek advice from expert organisations to monitor and mitigate the impact of the incident.
However, it provided reassurance there was no indication any data had been extracted from the server or published.
It will communicate with those impacted if this situation changes and plans to identify any information that was extracted and rebuild operations to ensure the delivery of services to Western Isles communities is continued.
Chief Executive of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar Malcolm Burr said: “The comhairle has been the victim of a cyber-crime which has caused significant damage and is having an impact on the delivery of many of our key services.
“Our priority is always the people of the Western Isles and we will continue to work to ensure the impact of this crime on everyone is lessened. This incident once again demonstrates the vulnerability of all public bodies to the growing threat of cyber-attacks.”
The impact of this incident to specific comhairle services will be communicated in separate and regular updates and it has established an incident management team.