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 stories, police have been known as to the museum on Friday after a just lately dismissed employee allegedly trespassed onto the museum web site and was in a position to shut down numerous techniques, together with the museum’s ticketing platform.
As a consequence, guests confronted important disruptions, with many unable to entry galleries and exhibitions which are often open to the general public.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed that it had been known as to the museum at 8:25pm on Thursday, following stories that “a person entered the British Museum and brought about injury to the museum’s safety and IT techniques.”
They confirmed {that a} man in his 50s had been arrested on suspicion of housebreaking and legal 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 techniques. Police attended and he was arrested on the scene,” a spokesperson for the British Museum informed the media on Friday. “We’re working arduous to get the museum again to being absolutely operational however with remorse our non permanent exhibitions have been closed in the present day and can stay so over the weekend – ticket holders have been alerted and refunds supplied.”
The unexpectedly dramatic flip of occasions, at a museum usually recognized for its sedate environment, has raised issues in regards to the safety at certainly one of Britain’s best-known cultural establishments.
What has not been made clear is how an unauthorised individual was in a position to achieve bodily entry to the pc techniques. It’s thought-about good observe to revoke people’ entry – each bodily and digital – to techniques once they go away the employment of an organization, by revoking passwords and taking away ID badges.
It is attainable, 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 an alternative relying upon much less safe methods of controlling entry to privileged areas – equivalent to a mixture keypad.
The one comfort is that it seems the suspect was caught within the strategy of inflicting the alleged injury whereas on the positioning itself. Though, after all, it will have been a lot better if that they had not been in a position to achieve entry within the first place.
The British Museum says that it has initiated a radical evaluation of its safety protocols to stop related assaults occurring sooner or later. These measures embody a overview of its entry controls and monitoring techniques to make sure that solely authorised employees can enter delicate areas of the museum.
The museum says additionally it is evaluating whether or not it must strengthen the cybersecurity measures it has in place to defend its IT infrastructure.
Taking the chance to overview its cybersecurity actually makes a number of sense, because the British Museum shouldn’t be alone in going through challenges associated to cybersecurity.
In October 2023, the British Library – just like the British Museum, an iconic establishment that preserves and showcases an enormous array of cultural heritage and data – was hit by a ransomware assault that’s estimated to have value it thousands and thousands of kilos and nonetheless impacts a few of its companies.
In mild 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 crammed with treasures from world wide, however it’s going through rising strain to return artefacts taken from different international locations.
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.
