“When Dealing With Sensitive Data, Companies Are At Greater Risk Than…”

Following the news that the Barts Health Trust has been hit by hackers, Jonathan Martin, EMEA Operations Director at Anomali commented below.

Jonathan Martin, EMEA Operations Director at Anomali:

“Unfortunately this type of attack is not losing prevalence. Luckily, on this occasion the trust did not have to pay any ransom, yet having to cancel 2,800 patient appointments across a 48 hour period is damaging to the NHS’s already weak reputation. When dealing with sensitive data, companies are at greater risk than most and therefore have a greater responsibility to ensure these types of attacks are mitigated.

Organisations, particularly those whose priority it is to preserve the nation’s wellbeing, have to realise that not only will they be compromised in the future, they almost certainly already have been. So, we need to start thinking along different lines about how we deal with such breaches. Education of staff as well as adding in multiple sources of threat intelligence to monitor applications is a great place to start – this reduces the average 200+ days to identify a breach down to a much smaller number and distils malicious activity into actionable data that can help protect organisations going forward.”