FOI/202600515253 · FOI · unclear
Number of Scottish Government staff accessing Proton or Nord VPN accounts: FOI release
Information requested
Please provide a log of the number of Scottish Government staff accessing Proton or Nord VPN accounts/email accounts from Scottish Government IT equipment.
Please provide the number of staff and their Directorate, for example:
Proton - 2 staff - Directorate for Mental Health
Nord VPN - 2 staff - Directorate for Environment
Response
The Scottish Government retains six months of Internet access logs. Any response will contain information from within that time frame.
There are no logs for Nord or Proton VPN's. Third-party VPN services are not authorised for use on our network and are blocked by our IT Systems.
Additionally, Nord does not provide email services, and therefore there are no records of Nord email account access.
Between December 2025 and April 2026, there were 49 Scottish Government members of staff who accessed Proton email using Scottish Government IT equipment. Please find a breakdown of the number of staff by Directorate below.
Directorates Number DIRECTOR-GENERAL COMMUNITIES 3 DIRECTOR-GENERAL CORPORATE 27 DIRECTOR-GENERAL ECONOMY 7 DIRECTOR-GENERAL EDUCATION AND JUSTICE 2 DIRECTOR-GENERAL EXCHEQUER, STRATEGY AND PERFORMANCE 2 DIRECTOR-GENERAL HEALTH & SOCIAL CARE 2 DIRECTOR-GENERAL NET ZERO 6 Total 49
About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.
Contact Please quote the FOI reference Central Correspondence Unit Email: contactus@gov.scot Phone: 0300 244 4000 The Scottish Government St Andrew's House Regent Road Edinburgh EH1 3DG
Attachments
No attachments found.