British Library: Cybercrime

(asked on 11th January 2024) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 27 November 2023 to Question 2570 on British Library: Cybercrime, what estimate has her Department made of the cost of restoring services following the cyber attack at the British Library.


Answered by
Julia Lopez Portrait
Julia Lopez
Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
This question was answered on 18th January 2024

The final costs of recovery from the recent cyber-attack on the British Library are not yet confirmed. As it has from the outset, the British Library remains in close and regular contact with the Department on the ongoing work to investigate and assess the impact of the attack and to recover services.

Despite the cyber attack, the British Library’s buildings have remained open and well-used throughout, and it has maintained some key services including reading room access for personal study and some limited collection item ordering, exhibitions, learning events, business support, and onsite retail. In the immediate aftermath essential services such as WiFi and event ticket sales were quickly re-established.

On 15 January, the British Library restored a searchable online version of its main catalogue, comprising records of printed books, journals, maps, music scores and rare books. This will enable a manual process of checking availability and ordering to the Reading Rooms. In addition, it will offer access to an increased range of special collection material such as manuscripts and archives. Taken together, these improvements mean that from this date the majority of physical books and special collections held at its St Pancras site will once again be available for use.

Further updates will be provided as the Library continues to recover from the attack.

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