London’s world-famous British Museum was compelled to partially shut its doorways on the finish of final week, following a severe safety breach involving a former IT contractor.
As The Guardian studies, police had been known as to the museum on Friday after a lately dismissed employee allegedly trespassed onto the museum web site and was capable of shut down numerous programs, together with the museum’s ticketing platform.
As a consequence, guests confronted vital disruptions, with many unable to entry galleries and exhibitions which might be normally open to the general public.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed that it had been known as to the museum at 8:25pm on Thursday, following studies that “a person entered the British Museum and brought on injury to the museum’s safety and IT programs.”
They confirmed {that a} man in his 50s had been arrested on suspicion of housebreaking and prison injury. He has since been bailed.
“An IT contractor who was dismissed final week trespassed into the museum and shut down a number of of our programs. Police attended and he was arrested on the scene,” a spokesperson for the British Museum instructed the media on Friday. “We’re working laborious to get the museum again to being absolutely operational however with remorse our short-term exhibitions have been closed immediately and can stay so over the weekend – ticket holders have been alerted and refunds provided.”
The unexpectedly dramatic flip of occasions, at a museum usually identified for its sedate environment, has raised considerations concerning the safety at one among Britain’s best-known cultural establishments.
What has not been made clear is how an unauthorised individual was capable of acquire bodily entry to the pc programs. It’s thought-about good apply to revoke people’ entry – each bodily and digital – to programs after they go away the employment of an organization, by revoking passwords and taking away ID badges.
It is doable, after all, that ID badges and key playing cards weren’t taken away from the IT contractor when he was dismissed, or that the museum was as a substitute relying upon much less safe methods of controlling entry to privileged areas – similar to a mix keypad.
The one comfort is that it seems the suspect was caught within the technique of inflicting the alleged injury whereas on the positioning itself. Though, after all, it might have been significantly better if they’d not been capable of acquire entry within the first place.
The British Museum says that it has initiated an intensive evaluation of its safety protocols to forestall comparable assaults occurring sooner or later. These measures embody a assessment of its entry controls and monitoring programs to make sure that solely authorised workers can enter delicate areas of the museum.
The museum says it is usually evaluating whether or not it must strengthen the cybersecurity measures it has in place to defend its IT infrastructure.
Taking the chance to assessment its cybersecurity actually makes lots of sense, because the British Museum will not be alone in dealing with challenges associated to cybersecurity.
In October 2023, the British Library – just like the British Museum, an iconic establishment that preserves and showcases an unlimited array of cultural heritage and data – was hit by a ransomware assault that’s estimated to have price it hundreds of thousands of kilos and nonetheless impacts a few of its companies.
In gentle of such incidents, extra museums are investing in superior safety applied sciences and coaching for employees to recognise and mitigate potential dangers.
The British Museum is stuffed with treasures from world wide, however it’s dealing with rising strain to return artefacts taken from different nations.
Probably the most notable instance is the Parthenon Marbles, historic sculptures faraway from Athens by Lord Elgin within the early nineteenth century. For many years, Greece has been campaigning for his or her return.
