7 hours Ago By [email protected] (Carmelo Garcia)
A Gloucestershire council which turned off its systems is working to catch up on the backlog of work after being given the all clear. The cyber scare which forced Tewkesbury Borough Council to shut down its IT systems was initially believed to be an attack. However, it is understood to have been an accident.
Tewkesbury declared a major incident on September 4 after the incident, which a source said was its A major incident was declared when what was believed to be unknown user accounts were found on the council's internal systems. The council shut down all services provided online and then redeployed staff to towns across the area to ensure the most vulnerable had access to services. The council has since been given the all clear and no data was lost during the incident.
However, the authority is now working to catch up on the backlog of work created as the IT systems being down made it extremely difficult for officers to progress their normal work. The council recently decided to streamline its planning process as the cyber incident added 152 applications to the backlog the council had prior to the cyber incident. As of October 29, it was estimated the backlog would rise from 238 to around 390 as a result of the service’s downtime.
Tewkesbury Borough Council Chief Executive Alistair Cunningham said: “Now that the cyber incident is behind us, and all our systems have been safely brought back online, I’d like to thank our residents and businesses who waited patiently while we recovered. “I’m pleased to confirm, once again, that no data was lost as a result of the incident. It is important to point out that while the required thorough security checks were carried out and officers were redeployed to address the incident, it was difficult for teams to progress their normal work.
“This inevitably resulted in some backlogs - for example in our planning service - but our officers are making excellent progress to ensure this is worked through as quickly as possible. “Throughout the incident, we had to devise many workarounds to ensure we could continue to deliver our services, particularly to our most vulnerable residents. “During this time, it was clear to see the value of strong partnerships – our public sector partners did not hesitate to step up to the challenge, helping us to respond and ensure our communities and residents were supported.
I’d like to offer them my sincere thanks.”.
