Guest Post By Kelsey Rausch
The United Kingdom Parliament was hit by a cyber attack late Friday night, June 24.
Considering that there are about 2.6 billion smartphone users around the world, it is not too uncommon for Members of Parliament (MPs) to check their emails when they are out of their offices. However, MPs were alerted on Friday night that they would not be able to access their emails unless they were in their offices in central London. This, of course, was for security reasons in response to the cyber attack.
The Telegraph explains that this cyber breach isn’t the first one MPs have faced in recent weeks — this attack comes just a few days after hacking groups gained access to the classified email passwords of many different MPs and put them online.
In order to fix the situation as soon as possible, Parliament security officials are working with England’s National Cyber Security Centre to protect their network the best they can. But even still, MPs are quite frustrated with the security breach. One affected member even told the Telegraph that MPs always seem to be “one or two steps behind the hackers.” They also believe that the reason they always get hacked is simply that there are not many preventative measures taken in the whole of Parliament to stop cyber attacks.
Unfortunately, cyber attacks have been all too common across the world in recent years. They normally aren’t taken care of as fast as the U.K Parliament sprang into action, and because of this, 60% of small businesses go out of business within six months of a cyber breach.
For example, in England alone, there have been many cyber attacks affecting their people, with no two being the same. Earlier this year, their National Health Service experienced an explosive cyber attack where hackers shut down hospitals across the nation.
A House of Commons Spokeswoman has released a statement on the breach as a way for the country to understand exactly what is going on. According to BBC News, the statement reads:
“The Houses of Parliament have discovered unauthorized attempts to access parliamentary user accounts. We are continuing to investigate this incident and take further measures to secure the computer network, liaising with the National Cyber Security Centre. We have systems in place to protect member and staff accounts and are taking the necessary steps to protect our systems. A number of MPs have confirmed to the BBC they are not able to access their parliamentary email accounts remotely.”
As of right now, there is no word on when the MPs will be able to access their emails remotely.
Kelsey Rausch is a writer and an avid world traveler. When she’s not writing or listening to 80s music, you can find her exploring different countries, taking selfies with her dog Lady, and in constant search for the perfect brownie recipe.
