What the expert said:
“It’s been alarmingly quiet,” says Martin Borrett, chief technical officer for IBM Security Europe. “We were expecting to see a wave of attacks after the NSA dump. I am still expecting something major before Christmas.”“Although the effects have been less widespread, Bad Rabbit shows the hackers are not resting on their laurels,” says Betsy Cooper, executive director at Berkeley University’s centre for long-term cyber security.
Ms Cooper adds: “One of the key lessons from NotPetya is that it’s not as easy to get victims to pay ransomware fines as perhaps the hackers thought. Payments for NotPetya were relatively low. “So some hackers may be taking more time and seeking to more carefully execute attacks to ensure that such attacks reap greater financial rewards.”
“We now have that healthy paranoia, and there’s a level of heightened awareness,” adds Mr Borrett. “Everyone’s being that bit more vigilant.”
The NCSC, a division of UK intelligence agency GCHQ, says 590 were considered “significant incidents” while more than 30 were assessed as “being sufficiently serious enough to require a cross-government response process”.
“The UK faces threats from across the globe on a daily basis,” says Ciaran Martin, NCSC chief executive. “It’s not a question of ‘if’ cyber attacks will happen, it’s a matter of ‘when’.”
“We need to get better at sharing information because the bad guys are really good at it,” says Brian Kelly, Rackspace chief security officer.
Source: Financial Times
