The NHS is not only a ransomware target, but it’s fallen victim multiple times over the last year or so.
Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust has secured itself a footnote in the history of healthcare IT that it probably didn’t want. It has become the first organisation to make national headlines for suffering a virus attack so virulent that it had to all but cease operations. For three days. Just as the government decided to relaunch its cyber security strategy.
The trust has said that “following expert advice” it shut down “the majority of our systems” to “isolate and destroy” the virus. It hasn’t said much more, and the matter is now in the hands of the police. Nevertheless, one must assume that when it says “a virus”, what the trust means is ransomware.
One also must assume that the expert who was around to give the “isolate and destroy” advice was absent prior to the attack.
