THE BOROUGH council is subject to daily cyber attacks, council documents have revealed.

Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council's most recent threat matrix, from September, shows that the authority currently deems itself to be at a high cyber risk.

The report says the main threat is from denial of service attacks, where users are flooded with traffic so they can't access their system, and phishing emails.

They say that this could have a "catastrophic" impact on the authority.

In terms of how it manages the risk, the report reads: "The council continually monitors threats to its systems externally by way of an Intrusion Protection system (IPS).

"Internally the council uses Intrusion Detection Systems to monitor threats.

"The council also uses Advanced threat analysis to monitor behavioural activity on its network. These systems are updated by the provider regularly with the latest threat signatures."

Additionally, the council says that information management is at high risk - the report acknowledges it handles a "great deal of personal and commercially sensitive information".

It comes after it was revealed that the council referred themself to the ICO over a "serious" GDPR breach in July.

BDBC say that the information could be leaked if there policies are not followed, human error, a lack of staff training or theft.

The authority also put in place mandatory, annual e-learning training for all staff, including temporary staff and contractors.

Also included in the threat matrix was a poor relationship between political group leaders having a 'critical' impact on effective governance.

The report, which downgraded the threat from possible to low likelihood, said: "A lack of capacity, depth and resilience of relationships across political groups may result in reduced dialogue, inappropriate behaviours, the slowing down of decision making and an increase in formal complaints through a variety of mechanisms."

However, two group leaders on the Audit and Accounts committee hit out at the report.

Cllr Ian Tilbury, leader of the Basingstoke and Deane Independents, said that the relationship had always been good between the groups, but that there was a bigger issue between council officers and the groups, or between officers themselves.

Additionally, Cllr Gavin James, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: "There is an element of disagreement between us and thank god we have got that because otherwise we would be a lousy democracy.

"I would hate people to think there is a big issue in this council of groups not getting on."