Treasury received five million malicious emails over past three years, research finds

29 Oct 2021

Research carried out by think tank Parliament Street has revealed that HM Treasury received almost five million malicious emails over the past three years.

A Freedom of Information (FoI) request submitted by Parliament Street found that 4,870,389 malware, phishing and spam emails were blocked by the Treasury over the three years.

The research revealed that 1,918,944 malicious emails were sent to the Treasury between October 2019 and September 2020, whilst 1,680 were sent between October 2020 and September 2021.

Over 126 million malicious emails were sent to House of Commons inboxes, Parliament Street also found.

In the recent Autumn Budget, Chancellor Rishi Sunak pledged significant levels of investment to help improve the resilience and security of government digital services. £468 million will be provided over the next three years to enhance the government's ability to defend against cyber-attacks.