As highlighted earlier this month, we noticed some unusual activity on a server that supports Canmore, PastMap, Buildings at Risk Register and Scotland's Places.
As a precaution, we took this and related services offline to investigate further and prevent additional risk to our systems, however we continue to find no evidence that any information was stolen or accessed.
We've been working on moving these services to a new and more secure platform. Rather than bringing the old systems back online first, we decided to move everything to the new one as soon as possible. That meant that the websites were impacted a bit longer, but they will be safer in the long run.
This work has been progressing well and we’re pleased to advise that we have now restored full service to the Buildings At Risk Register, with database functionality also restored to both the Canmore and Scotland’s Places website. Mapping functionality will remain offline on both of these sites a little longer as we do further work on the GIS systems, however we hope to be able to provide further updates on this soon.
This also means that the Pastmap Website will remain offline a little longer as it is primarily dependent on the GIS functionality.
We appreciate your patience as we continue to make this important switch. We'll continue to update you on our progress through this webpage. We expect to have a clearer timeline for when these additional functions will be back up and running soon.
In the meantime, our teams are ready to help. Contact us on the following email addresses depending on your query:
- Enquiries relating to our archives or archival services: archives@hes.scot
- Enquiries about Canmore and PastMap: archives@hes.scot
- Enquiries about the Buildings at Risk Register: barr@hes.scot
Several of our datasets, including Canmore point data, are still available to download from https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/, which is unaffected.
Thank you for your understanding!
Updated: 28/06/24