Cyber attacks are happening on a ‘daily basis’, according to local authority officers who are now leading a region wide drive to protect computer systems.

Sandwell Council is taking the lead role in a joint effort to improve security across the West Midlands and safeguard data on millions of residents and service users from being stolen.

The announcement came in a discussion on cyber security and information risks at a meeting of borough’s Audit and Risk Assurance Committee.

Sue Knowles, Head of ICT & Revenues and Benefits, told the meeting protecting data was a never-ending process with threats or attempted breaches on a daily basis.

She said: “We are working day in and day out to ensure that the council’s infrastructure is secure.

“We have set up a West Midlands group to to discuss this across councils so we can learn from each other and we are actually going to be leading that.”

She added: “We get daily reports on how successful our malware systems are and to date they seem to be blocking all threats.”

Members of the committee were told that officers have a daily report on attempted cyber attacks on its systems which are used to improve security and the new group would look at how councils can jointly work together to buy software and protect their IT systems.

Cllr Liam Preece, saying the report could not go into detail for security reasons, called for a closed meeting in the future “where, perhaps we can have a private report and you can disclose more information”.