English people breathed a sigh of relief after not encountering a second wave of cyberattacks. Cyberattacks debilitated hospital computer systems across the country on Friday. Those cyberattacks were part of larger ones that affected almost 100 countries.
British Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt spoke on the issue, “Well, I have this morning been briefed by GCHQ and the National Cyber Security Centre, and according to our latest intelligence we have not seen a second wave of attacks and the level of criminal activity is at the lower end of the range that we had anticipated and so I think that is encouraging. But the message is very clear, not just for organisations like the NHS but for private individuals, for businesses. Although we’ve never seen anything on this scale when it comes to ransomware attacks, they are relatively common and there are things that you can do, that everyone can do, all of us can do to protect ourselves against them. In particular making sure that our data is properly backed up and making sure that we are using the software patches, the anti-virus patches, that are sent out regularly by manufacturers and these are things that we can all do to reduce the risk of the impact that we’ve seen over the last 48 hours.”