The Infrastructure Problem at the Heart of UK Council Cyber Risk

The Reality of Legacy Infrastructure Across UK Local Government

Legacy technology represents a structural constraint rather than mere inconvenience. According to the LGA’s Local Government Digitalisation Almanac, “41% of council executives across England identify legacy technology as the single biggest barrier to change.” Challenges include elevated maintenance expenses, poor system interoperability, and deeply embedded operations making replacement appear prohibitively risky.

Councils aspire to enhance services and work efficiently yet encounter systematic obstacles. The NAO’s modernisation report noted that “maintaining ageing digital systems can consume more than three-quarters of a department’s total technology budget.”

The UK Council Cyber Threat Is Escalating

Outdated systems create security vulnerabilities that attackers actively exploit. UK authorities experienced over 2.3 million cyber incidents across 161 councils in 2022, with attacks rising 24% between 2022 and 2023 and personal data breaches climbing 58%.

High-profile incidents illustrate the consequences. Leicester City Council’s March 2024 ransomware attack disrupted child protection and social care services affecting 400,000 residents. In November 2025, a coordinated attack simultaneously compromised three London boroughs.

Modern observability platforms improve detection and response. Real-time monitoring across hybrid environments with automated threat detection enables faster incident containment before widespread disruption occurs.

A Practical Path Forward: Phased Modernisation, Not Wholesale Replacement

Effective transformation involves sequential workload migration rather than simultaneous system replacement. Most councils operate across three models:

• Private cloud for sensitive, critical workloads handling personal data or requiring guaranteed availability
• Public cloud for lower-risk services where scalability and cost efficiency matter more
• Hybrid cloud for workloads requiring secure movement between environments

What This Looks Like in Practice: Dacorum Borough Council

Dacorum faced familiar constraints: aging infrastructure limiting application performance alongside escalating cyber risk. Working with SysGroup, the Council implemented a complete refresh with next-generation compute, enhanced network switching, All-Flash storage with unified data management, and a VMware Private Cloud enabling consistent operations.

The Council reported: “Cyber resilience and recoverability were key drivers for this programme. The new platform gives us stronger protection, faster recovery capability and greater assurance around the integrity of our data and services.”

Where the Data Management Challenge Sits

Multi-cloud environments risk fragmented visibility across tools, dashboards, and compliance tracking. Consistent data infrastructure across on-premises and cloud environments eliminates these complications, enabling data movement without compatibility concerns.

Unified control platforms provide centralised management across hybrid estates. Automated compliance reporting supports regulatory demonstration and audit requirements under UK GDPR obligations.

Ransomware Recovery: Having a Guarantee Isn’t the Same as Having a Plan

Councils frequently overestimate their backup sufficiency. The Leicester incident demonstrated that backups themselves become targets, and recovery at scale under pressure differs substantially from theoretical readiness.

Dacorum’s deployment addressed recovery comprehensively through immutable snapshots protecting against ransomware, autonomous threat detection identifying abnormal behaviour early, encryption, access controls, and rapid restoration capability. NetApp’s Ransomware Recovery Guarantee for primary enterprise storage provides concrete protection supporting executive risk discussions.

Building a Strategy That Holds Up Over Time

Effective modernisation requires planned sequencing rather than reactive replacement. This involves mapping current systems, assessing workload risk, identifying legacy system constraints, and scheduling migrations while maintaining service continuity.

Building internal capability alongside infrastructure ensures organisational sustainability rather than repeated external dependency. Modern platforms supporting capacity planning and resource optimisation enable smaller IT teams to make informed infrastructure decisions.

Sources

• Local Government Digitalisation Almanac — Local Government Association
• Modernising ageing digital services — National Audit Office
• Cyber resilience funding — MHCLG Local Digital
• Cyber Assessment Framework for local government — NCSC
• Cyber Governance Code of Practice — UK Government
• Data Infrastructure Insights — NetApp
• Dacorum Borough Council Case Study — SysGroup
• Freedom of Information research on hybrid infrastructure — NetApp