Council ready to 'wargame' potential cyber attacks

The council said exercises were scheduled to test cyber security

A council must be prepared for cyber attacks and should get ready to "wargame" hypothetical scenarios, a councillor has said.

Andrew Kolker said an attack on Cheshire East Council would be "catastrophic" and said firm plans must be made to see how the authority would cope.

His comments at a council meeting came after the recent CrowdStrike outage paralysed many computer systems around the world.

The Dane Valley councillor said it would be "nigh on impossible" to operate a council without computers and telephones.

He told the audit and governance committee: "I’d suggest it would be extremely difficult."

'Back-up policy'

He said councils could also be expected to step in if there was an attack on banking systems, for example, and people were unable to buy food or fuel.

Josie Griffiths, head of audit and risk management, said wargaming exercises to test or improve "tactical expertise" were now scheduled across the organisation.

“We have taken part in broader, emergency planning led scenarios along a very similar line,” she said.

“And yes, it is very difficult to be able to manage and deliver the full program of services which this organisation delivers, and we really need to be able to understand, criticality, proportionality, accessibility.”

Committee member Ron Jones said: “There is, I believe, a back-up policy in place for computer failure, so we do have a foundation on which we can work should that happen.”