You asked
Please could you provide the total number of spam/malicious emails blocked by your organisation over the last 2 calendar years (2019 and 2018) broken down by year.
Please could you also provide a category for the malicious emails e.g. 2,300 phishing emails, 5,000 spam/junk emails.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Like most organisations, we receive many spam and suspicious emails which are blocked by our security systems. In 2018, new systems were installed and the total number of emails blocked with this system was 163,697. In 2019, we blocked 7,624,240 mails.
We are unable to provide you with more detailed information, specifically categorising the number of mails received as this knowledge could provide insights into our level of IT protection and therefore aid anyone wishing to launch an attack on our IT systems. The information requested is exempted under S31(1)(a) - the prevention or detection of crime. To use this exemption we are required to consider the public interest test, and whilst we note there are public interest arguments in favour of transparency and disclosure we have decided that these are outweighed by other public interest factors that are in favour of non-disclosure. Principally we consider that release of the information requested would prejudice our ability to maintain and run a secure and safe IT network. This is an essential function for all government departments and is particularly important for ONS which processes personal and economic information on its systems.