Last week, Lyngby-Taarbæk Municipality was crippled for two hours by a Ddos cyber-attack, and this week some 90 percent of municipalities in Denmark revealed they have endured a cyber-attack within the past year.
According to a survey by DR Nyheder, 47 out of the 54 municipalities that took part said they had been cyber-attacked at some point in 2016.
“There is clearly an increasing trajectory,” Favrskov Municipality told DR Nyheder.
“The threats are increasing in frequency and becoming more advanced. IT and digitalisation is spreading to more and more areas, which in turn steps up the need for beefing up cyber-security.”
READ MORE: Danish intelligence agency to start ‘hacker academy’ to fight cyber warfare
Big business
Typically, hackers attack the municipalities using so-called ‘ransomware’ to lock files and then demand a fee to open them again.
Most municipalities combat the attack by re-installing the infected computers and recreating the files from a backup copy – although work done prior to the attack is usually lost.
The survey also revealed that few municipalities had been attacked before the spike in 2015.
According to new Europol report, cybercrime is now a bigger business that traditional crime in many EU nations.
