asked the Chairman of Committees:

On how many occasions in the last year malicious programs have compromised parliamentary computer systems; for each occasion, how many machines were affected; and how long it took to remove the programs from the system. [HL2982]

In the last year, neither the Parliamentary Network nor parliamentary applications or servers that are fully managed by PICT have been adversely affected by any malicious programs. Any viruses detected are quarantined or removed by anti-virus software. Since January there have been 79 instances logged when single machines appeared to have been infected by malware but these incidents were contained on the individual machine. The malware was removed as soon as practicably possible.