A STUDY revealing the amount of data breaches across Welsh local authorities in the last five years has revealed hundreds of incidents have occured in Gwent.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request was lodged with 103 county councils across the UK by VPNOverview – a collection of VPN websites covering all aspects of online privacy, cybersecurity, and internet freedom.

Nineteen of Wales’ 22 local authorities responded to the FOI request, which asked for the number of data breach cases reported by each county council over the last five years.

This is how they ranked:

  • Cardiff City Council: 627
  • Wrexham County Borough Council: 545
  • Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council: 458
  • Flintshire County Council: 382
  • Powys County Council: 317
  • Pembrokeshire County Council: 254
  • Newport City Council: 251
  • Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council: 227
  • Caerphilly County Borough Council: 208
  • Conwy County Borough Council: 197
  • City and County of Swansea: 178
  • Neath Port Talbot Council: 173
  • Torfaen County Borough Council: 171
  • Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council: 144
  • Monmouthshire Council: 135
  • Ceredigion County Council: 94
  • Gwynedd Council: 76
  • Denbighshire County Council: 65
  • Bridgend County Borough Council: 49

Carmarthenshire County Council, Vale of Glamorgan Council and the Isle of Anglesey County Council did not provide data, while Wrexham only provided data from 2018 onwards, their worst hit year being between 2020 and 2021 with 249 breaches.

  • A version of this article originally appeared on our sister site The National.