January 27, 2016 10.28 am This story is over 111 months old

Lincolnshire County Council continues to tackle malware attack

Work continues: Lincolnshire County Council has said at this time there is no evidence of any data loss from its systems, after IT experts worked through the night to identify a malicious software attack.
Lincolnshire County Council said an emergency fund wasn't necessary | Photo: File/The Lincolnite

Lincolnshire County Council has said at this time there is no evidence of any data loss from its systems, after IT experts worked through the night to identify a malicious software attack.

The attack, which began in the afternoon of January 26, was reportedly delivered to significant numbers of council staff in the form of an email.

The council has security systems in place to deal with this sort of incident. The recent attack has been described as a “zero day virus”.

Security procedures were immediately put into practice when the council became aware of the virus, and systems were closed down.

Work has continued throughout the night to identify, remove and cleanse the malware from infected computers.

The council is currently testing this solution and once confident that it has been successful will begin a phased restore to IT services.

It has been indicated that the system will be back up later on January 27.

Council staff have also been warned to be extra vigilant when accessing emails.