Essex County Fire & Rescue Service

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FOI / 3775 / 2018 - Cyber Attacks

Thank you for your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I can confirm that Essex County Fire & Rescue Service does hold this information.

Please see below the answers to your request.

Initial request:

I would like some information on attempted cyber-attacks upon your organisation over the last three financial years. Please could you list the total number of recorded attacks, broken down by year and by type of attack e.g. malware, denial-of-service, phishing etc. e.g. FY 17-18 1,000 malware, 500 phishing, 500 Denial-of-service. Please detail whether any of these attacks successful of blocked.

Final response:

ECFRS ICT use a selection of tools to defend against the attack categories mentioned. The tools provide dashboards and reporting on the activity they have blocked. These are not collated or retained to provide the statistics you request.

Email filtering is a multi-layered process with blocks at various stages of analysis. As such a message with a malware payload my get blocked because it is from a known bad source before it is analysed for content. In the last month 42% of email connections were blocked, just 78 of those because of a malware payload.

No defence is 100% effective and our users report up to 10 emails per month as potential phishing.

Malware has not successfully propagated on the desktop estate. Desktop antivirus triggers occasionally on individual system, trending information is not available.

Current statistics show that 33% of connections from the internet are blocked by firewall. These are not categorised in any way and could be port scans or attempted malicious payloads or DoS attacks.

The defences we have in place are effective and over the last three financial years we have seen no service affecting Security Incidents attributed to Malware, Phishing or Denial of Service attacks.

If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request you have the right to apply to apply for an internal review. Internal review requests should be submitted within two months of the date of your original email and should be addressed to: Internal Review, Performance & Data Team, Kelvedon Park, Rivenhall, Witham, Essex CM8 3HB

Thank you for your interest in Essex County Fire And Rescue Service.