A new cyberattack has once again disrupted key London councils, affecting Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, triggering widespread IT outages. With 2025 ending as the most severe year yet for cyber incidents, attention is now turning to what 2026 may bring. Spencer Starkey, Executive Vice President, SonicWall EMEA, warns that public services may face even greater threats in the year to come.
“Cyberattacks in 2026 will increasingly try to erode public confidence in digital public services by targeting UK government bodies. Local authorities, with outdated systems and IT teams already stretched by budget pressures, face sustained attacks designed to disrupt essential citizen services. These attacks will have second-order consequences, slowing service delivery for millions of people and creating long-term administrative backlogs that outlast the breach itself.
“Looking ahead to 2026, it’s clear that UK sectors once seen as low risk for cyberattacks are now very much in the spotlight. Groups like Scatter Spider have shown how devastating their attacks can be. Their blend of social engineering and compromised identities makes modern attackers just as sophisticated as the zero-days many fear they simply need access. In highly connected industries, this access is easier to obtain than many organisations would like to admit.
“In an economy where every service is digitally linked, a compromise in one node can ripple across the entire system. Without substantial investment in modern defences, particularly those capable of identifying and countering AI-driven threats, 2026 could see significant disruptions affecting millions of consumers and businesses across the UK,” said Spencer Starkey, Executive Vice President, SonicWall EMEA.
