Since the incident on December 20, Gloucester City Council has been attempting to repair some of its online services. The council's online revenue and benefits areas, as well as planning and customer service, are all affected. It pleaded for patience while the services were restored and invited users to email it directly if they had any problems. In addition, the council is collaborating with the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to resolve the problem.
Gloucester City Council is the city authority for the city of Gloucester, which is divided into 18 wards and has 39 councilors elected to serve on the City Council. There were 22 Conservative councilors, 10 Labour councilors, and 7 Liberal Democrat councilors following the 2016 election. The current composition consists of 18 Conservatives, 9 Liberal Democrats, 8 Labour, and 1 independent.
Residents are also unable to use interactive online application forms used to claim housing benefits, council tax support, test and track support payments, or discretionary housing payments. The problem appears to be so significant that other councils in Gloucestershire, as well as government organizations, are said to have blocked emails from the city council. According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the council's planning application website is also unavailable as a result of the attack.
Those checking in are presently unable to read planning application details or submit comments via the online portal, and the council is unable to email or post plans to customers. The council claims it is doing everything possible to ensure that customers can still contact them, with the primary focus being on dealing with urgent customer matters. Meanwhile, work is being done to bring systems back online once it is deemed safe to do so.
A spokesperson from Gloucester City Council said: “Through the course of December 20, we became aware that some of our IT systems had been affected by a cyber incident. As a result of the incident, there is currently disruption to some systems and services. We are doing all we can to make sure customers can still contact us but we do ask people to be patient."
"We have been actively working with the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Crime Agency to understand more about the nature of the attack and minimize the impact," he added. Our priority for the next several days will be to handle critical customer issues and to continue working with national agencies to bring our systems back online as fast and safely as possible, he concluded.
