Hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries were recently infected with a Ransomware virus called WannaCry. This virus made services like the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Scotland inaccessible unless they paid Bitcoin ransom.
More than a week later, companies across the globe are still recovering from this NHS cyber attack. It’s being called the biggest of its kind in history.
While everyone is bolstering their defenses against potential copycat attacks, questions still abound about the NHS cyber attack. What can we learn from the recent NHS cyber attack and how can we protect ourselves in the future?
Anyone who’s used a computer in the last 29 years is familiar with the various incarnations of the Windows operating system. Windows XP was a perennial favorite from its release in 2001 until Microsoft officially discontinued support for the OS in 2014. It was also the longest running version of the operating system.
Unfortunately, in spite of Microsoft ending their support of Windows XP, many industries still utilize computers that run this OS. These XP machines, in places like National Health Service, became vulnerable over time. They just weren’t getting the new security updates that were keeping Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 safe.
This flaw is one of the things that enabled WannaCry to infect so many computers during this attack. Operating system licenses aren’t cheap, and IT budgets are often the first to be cut when money needs to be saved. By cutting IT budgets, computers aren’t updated and are left vulnerable.
What can we do to prevent attack like this from happening again or, at the very least, safeguard our computer systems to make them harder to breach?
Finally, it’s essential to be prepared. Hackers, by their nature, are clever creatures and will find a way into even the most encrypted system. Have a plan in place to outline exactly how your company will handle the situation. Will you pay the ransom, format your computers and rely on the backups or execute a totally different plan?
For now, it’s up to the NHS and other affected companies to pick up the pieces and come up with new and innovative ways to protect themselves from cyber attacks in the future. It will likely become more difficult to ensure constant security as the years go by, due to the number of interconnected devices being purchased every single day.
The last enormous DDoS attack was powered largely by unsecured internet of things devices, smart appliances that had not been reset from their default password.
With as much time and energy as we spend creating these networks, it makes sense that we should spend the money and effort to protect them.
