It's no secret that local government has been hard hit by austerity cuts. But cloud and mobile technologies offer a fantastic way to do more with less and improve productivity for the thousands of council employees up and down the country that work on the road, from housing maintenance officers to refuse collectors. Unfortunately, this digital transformation also brings with it the risk of data loss – soon to be punishable by potentially astronomical European fines – and cyber attacks which could cripple an entire organisation.

Local authorities must understand the data they hold is highly sensitive, and increasingly attractive to hackers looking to sell it on the dark web. Some 18 million new malware samples were discovered in Q3 alone. Many of these are crypto-ransomware variants which can bring organisations to a standstill by locking users out of their files unless a ransom is paid. Lincolnshire County Council was effectively offline