Question

To ask the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, representing the House of Commons Commission, if the Commission will assess the potential merits of consolidating WiFi systems on the Parliamentary Estate.

Parliament already has a single wireless network. However, this can appear to be a number of different ones when viewing the WiFi available on estate. This is due to it being segmented into a number of logical virtual networks. This is designed to enable effective cyber security management depending on the end user connecting. For example, guests on the Parliamentary Estate and users of non-Parliamentary devices computers are asked to manually enter an ID and password. However, Members and users of Parliamentary-issued devices automatically connect to the network. PDS plan to rationalise the number of WiFi networks visible on the Parliamentary estate over the course of 2018, the intent being to reduce the number visible to the minimum viable to meet cyber security requirements.