The Scottish Parliament's email systems have been attacked by hackers, Holyrood's chief executive has confirmed.

In an email to staff on Tuesday, Sir Paul Grice warned MSPs and their staff to take care when "opening any emails from external sources" due to the attack.

Last month, a similar attack was launched against MPs and their staff at Westminster.

Hackers have been trying to access parliamentary email accounts through the use of a brute-force attack, in which the perpetrators try to enter the correct password over and over again.

Due to repeated login attempts some users may find themselves locked out of their emails, Sir Paul warned.

In the email, Sir Paul said: "The parliament's robust cybersecurity measures identified this attack at an early stage and the additional security measures which we have in readiness for such situations have already been invoked.

"Our IT systems remain fully operational."

All users of the parliamentary email systems will now have to create a 10-character long password with additional security features to limit the risk of it being hacked.