News Alert WannaCry Ransomware
17 May 2017
Ransomware attacks have been on the rise and increasingly reported on for the past few years. The new variant of ransomware that was reported last Friday, which has a nickname “Wannacry”, has made the world realize the extent of damage and downtime ransomware can cause to an organization. This attack has caused the British National Health Service to shut down its operations, and various other institutions were paralyzed during Wannacry’s initial attack. It is reported that Wannacry has now spread to over 150 countries.
Wannacry ransomware is a hybrid malware which has the capability of a "worm" to find vulnerable systems on a local network and then encrypt ("lock up") the data stored in it. With Windows operating system being the target, Microsoft has released a patch to remediate this vulnerability. In addition, it can also identify the malware from its latest signature.
Despite all this remediation, it is still always advisable to adhere to IT security best practices to avoid or mitigate the risks of cyber-attacks; and most importantly to install the system patches and any upgrades timely.
Kindly refer to the attachment for more details.
