This is a quick HSE Ransomware Update

At the time of recording, we’re just one day shy of it being 5 weeks since we learned of the devastating impact of the HSE ransomware incident. To all of those experts that were on TV, Radio, Newspapers and other online media who were saying “Just pay the ransom and we’ll get back up and running.”

Here we are 5 weeks later and they’re still not back up and running. That’s even with them getting the key to decrypt the data within 3 days of the incident. So even having the key, it’s taking them so much longer to recover.

Why is it taking so long?

This is because the HSE has huge, vast quantities of data that needs to be checked and made sure the integrity is perfect. Because you don’t want your health records to be damaged in anyway, do you? I certainly wouldn’t. So they have to be so very careful with getting the data back.

What hope does a small business owner have?

For smaller businesses, which is where more my focus would be, things can be a lot simpler. It can be a lot easier for you to be able to recover from these type of ransomware incidents, if you put in place a decent backup strategy. I am happy to talk to any small business owner that needs any kind of assistance in making sure they have good backups in place.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

The post #WeekendWisdom 083 HSE Ransomware Update appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..

Where did this ransomware case study come from?

Earlier this week the data protection commission issued a report on the first two years of the GDPR and their regulatory activity within it.

It is quite an interesting report for privacy professionals and I read through it with a great deal of interest. And I came across a case study about a ransomware incident that a sports and leisure company had suffered. It was interesting in that data protection commission had gone back to the company after being told about the breach and they asked for quite a detailed list of items from that company. You can see this list here.

What did the Data Protection Commission want to know?

So you can see that they wanted to know:

• The chronology of the events that led up to the incident.
• They wanted a description of the hardware and software that the company used.
• What was the source and the attack vector of that ransomware
• What was the variant
• Was there some audit logs
• What was the demand notice for the ransomware
• Very important of course, whether there were backups available to recover from and
• finally what types of measures that company have put in place to try and prevent this from occurring in the first place

That seems like a lot for a ransomware incident.

That’s quite a detailed list of items and if you couldn’t answer those questions right now in your business, then you need some help. You need to have things like:

• A data breach handling procedure
• Need to have a asset registers for your hardware and software
• Your security setup and
• Your backups

All of these things you need to have those put in place in case this ever happens to you. So feel free to reach out if you need any assistance or advice on that.

So that’s it for this week. Let’s be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

How can L2 Cyber Security help you?

We offer a full range of training programmes, which can be delivered online or in-person*.

L2 Cyber Security are also a partner of CyberRiskAware for online self-directed Cyber Security Awareness training.

We can also provide assistance on implementing mitigation measures to help protect your business from #Ransomware.

Contact us for more information at info@L2CyberSecurity.com.

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The post #WeekendWisdom 034 Ransomware Case Study appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..