SOUTHEND Council is at risk of a “catastrophic” cyber attack, it has been revealed.

The authority’s latest corporate risk register rates the current threat of an attack as “catastrophic and very likely” but Daniel Cowan, leader of the council says he is confident the council has the right IT team in place.

Councils across the country are increasingly being targeted by hackers, including international operators, who can cause system failures, ransomware attacks and data breaches which can result in permanent loss of data.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Monday, Mr Cowan said: “We all know that local government is under a lot of pressure and stress from bad faith actors looking to access data and cripple council bodies’ data systems and to use those for nefarious means. I am confident in the processes we have in place.”

Despite the risk Mr Cowan praised the council’s IT team.

He said: “We’re very fortunate to have the people we have in this organization. We have much better data and digital maturity than many other organisations. We are in a good, very strong position and there are lots of council out there that are looking at Southend as to how they can learn.”

“I do believe our IT team are heading us in the right direction and they believe they can bring in the right key controls which would mean we would be in a much better position if we were to suffer some of the horrendous attacks that have happened to authorities Southend has been protected from because of our team.”

A number of councils have received assistance from the National Cyber Security Centre after their websites were targeted by the pro-Russia hacking group Noname05716.

At the beginning of the month Portsmouth City Council became the latest local authority to be hit by a cyber attack by the group.

The unitary council said it was among those affected by a distributed denial of service attack which flood websites with traffic causing disruption.

Pro-Russian hackers have claimed responsibility for the attacks, which have also affected Salford and Middlesbrough, among others.

The risk register effectively outlines the worst-case scenario of what could happen if the council is not appropriately managing the risk that it is facing.