AQW 30616/17-22

Ms Claire Sugden
Independent
East Londonderry

Tabled Date: 07/03/2022
Answered On Date: 11/03/2022
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Finance to detail the number of cyber-attacks on the NI Civil Service in each of the last five years.

Answer:

It is not possible to say how many cyber attacks there have been against the NICS in each year. However the number of hostile events blocked by the NICS Network firewalls are a good indication of the scale of the matter.

Over a 30 day period which is representative of recurring monthly figures 604,080 items have been blocked from entering the NICS Network, each one representing a possible cyber attack.

The NICS technical infrastructure blocks between 80-100 million emails per month from entering the NICS email domain. A large portion of these emails are likely to contain malicious cyber threats.