Departmental Internet

Mr. Stephen O'Brien
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland with reference to the answer of 4 November 2008, Official Report, columns 336-7W, on Government departments: information and communications technology, which IP addresses are used by (a) his Department and (b) computers in the offices of its (i) Ministers, (ii) communications officials and (iii) special advisers.

Ann McKechin
To help defend against electronic attack, it is standard good information security practice for corporate IT systems, not to publish internal IP addresses. When accessing internet websites, the IP addresses of all of the computers on the internal office IT system are hidden behind the following IP addresses which are publicly available—195.92.40.49 and 62.25.106.209. These IP addresses are shared with other Government Departments that use the Government Secure Intranet.