A man poses inside a server room at an IT company in this June 19, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/Illustration

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Scotland’s devolved parliament is suffering an ongoing brute-force cyber attack but the attack has not breached the assembly’s IT defenses, it said on Wednesday.

“At this point there is no evidence to suggest that the attack has breached our defenses and our IT systems continue to be fully operational,” the Scottish parliament said in a statement.

“Users should be aware, however, that this attack remains ongoing. It is not uncommon for brute force attacks to be sustained over a period of days so it is essential that IT account users are vigilant and report any suspicious issues,” it added.

Hackers using a “brute-force” attack repeatedly try to gain access to systems by trying different passwords.

Hackers are becoming more and more adept at developing or finding malware to wipe data on computers, making them inoperable and causing data breaches. Britain’s last major cyber attack was the “WannaCry” ransomware attack, which infected hundreds of thousands of computers in May and caused disruptions in more than 150 countries.