MPs have experienced nearly 23 million email cyber-attacks in eight months, averaging 2.7 million attacks per month, a 60 per cent increase compared to last years figures.

In 2019, there were just 1.7 million monthly average attacks per month.

The figures, documenting cyber email attacks from January to August this year, come from a Freedom of Information act request from the Parliament Street think tank.

The increase comes after Parliament’s announcement last year that it was implementing a two-year programme dedicated to building cyber capabilities and reducing risk facing staff.

The advent of coronavirus is likely to have boosted the number of attacks.

Tim Sadler, CEO of Tessian, commented on the figures: "These findings highlight the sheer scale of the threat that all businesses are facing. With millions of malicious emails being sent, the odds that one might work are high - especially if they are carefully crafted to evade detection. It just takes one busy and stressed employee to miss the cues or one very convincing message for cybercriminals to breach an organisation's security and access highly sensitive information.

"Hacking humans on email is still the easiest way for cybercriminals to hack into organisations and institutions. Governments, therefore, need to protect their people from falling for phishing attacks, putting solutions in place to automatically detect threats and educating employees on threats like social engineering attacks. Failure to do so and the fallout could be disastrous, as cybercriminals get their hands-on sensitive data and gain illegal access to officials' email accounts.”

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