Worldwide ransomware attack didn’t have to happen
The digital world experienced it’s first major digital attack last week, and it didn’t have to happen.
The first systems targeted by the ransomware attack were the National Health Services in the United Kingdom and were followed by systems in 150 countries worldwide. More attacks are expected this week until patches can be applied to the current systems. The security hole was identified as a weakness in Microsoft XP-based systems, originally discovered by the US. National Security Administration and revealed in a data dump stolen from the NSA last year. Here’s where it gets interesting.
Microsoft stopped supporting XP code in 2014, and worldwide legacy systems had not updated to newer operating systems. But when the NSA’s “backdoor” was revealed, Microsoft began working on a patch that was distributed to registered users one month ago.
We have reported over the past two years that the biggest problem in cybersecurity is the people just don’t pay attention to their security, even when they are given the tools to make their data secure. Eventually apathy catches up to you.
That’s why we at Eurocal Group are providing free data security evaluations for companies big and small. We’ve created a series of short informational videos covering what you may be missing if you are generally clueless and apathetic about what it takes to be secure with specific focus on legacy systems, big data, mobile app development, and cloud-based system. The introductory video is presented here, today.