This week’s Knowledge Update talks about how one-fifth of healthcare organisations still run XP, GDPR is a business opportunity and 50 million fraud attacks are expected next week.
One-fifth of healthcare organisations still run XP
According to Infoblox, around a quarter of healthcare IT professionals in the UK and USA are not confident with their ability to deal with cyber threats, despite 85% of organisations’ having increased their spending over the past year.
A fifth of 300 organisations still have Windows XP machines running with 18% of legacy OS machines having medical devices connected.
Over a quarter (26%) have said that they either don’t know how to update their OS or can’t update their OS. This places their systems at risk of attack and unable to patch as protection form the latest known vulnerabilities. 25% of respondents stated that they would pay the ransom in the event of a ransomware attack.
To best protect your businesses operating systems they should be supported and be as up to date as possible, protected with the latest patches and security fixes. If your business is unable to support the latest operating systems then it is especially important for your business to implement Anti-virus software.
As strains of Ransomware develop and evolve it is increasingly important for businesses to regularly and securely back up their critical data. Businesses cannot rely on anti-virus alone to protect themselves from Ransomware, a guide to Ransomware can be found here.
GDPR is a business opportunity
According to Philippe De Backer, Belgium’s secretary of state for privacy, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) should be viewed as a benefit to businesses. De Backer told ESSMA’s ISSE 2017 conference that for many the focus is on the challenges faced for compliance and the huge fines for any non-compliance
But in reality, the GDPR is an expansion of the ability to manage the use of data. According to De Backer, GDPR is effectively creating a global standard for data protection and is therefore an opportunity for businesses to offer products and services worldwide that comply with this standard.
This, in turn, enables trust between organisations and their customers, which he said is essential to doing business online and will be important to most businesses well into the future.
Organisations of all sizes will have to comply to the coming of GDPR or be at risk of punitive fines. A support pack and compliance guide can be found here.
Or for more information contact [email protected] or visit www.londondsc.co.uk.
50 million fraud attacks expected next week (Week Commencing 20th Nov)
As scammers look to capitalise on a busy shopping period, experts are predicting around 50 million fraud attempts around the world next week. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday approaching retailers expect to generate £7bn of sales.
According to TheatrMetriz, fraudsters are more than ready to take advantage of the increased retail activity, having harvested identity data from the dark web over recent months from high-profile breaches.
According to Vanita Pandey over the next week, there will be an estimated 5-8 million daily identity testing attacks. In the past 90 days, there have been 171 million attacks which is a 32% spike since the beginning of 2017.
Staff should be made aware of the threats posed from phishing through training and awareness sessions. Prevention advice for phishing can be found here.
More information about how you can be secure your business in the digital age can be found here.
