The recent news has been full of the global IT outage that affected many systems over the weekend, including airlines and patient access.  Although the incident was not caused by a cyber attack, it is important to note that it was a cyber incident which affects everyone.

A cyber incident is an event with threatens the confidentiality, integrity or availability of information systems, networks or the information they contain.

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Plans for the new government to introduce legislation for cyber security, digital and data were outlined in the King's speech on 17 July 2024.

This article discusses what a cyber incident is and what you should do if you experience one.  The important thing to note is that this isn't a full-blown cyber attack, but you should still go through various reporting and risk management processes.

Regular cyber training for staff is crucial given the amount of systems involved in running organisations.  Schools and Trusts should be doing this annually as advised by the DfE Cyber Security Digital Standards.

NHS Dumfries and Galloway has confirmed some children’s mental health data has been published by criminals following a cyber attack.    

A cyber incident review is a process or analysis undertaken after a cyber security incident or cyber attack has occurred.  It involves analysing the event in detail to understand what happened, why it happened and how it can be prevented in the future.

During February there have been a number of attacks reported on Universities in the UK.  There were reports of hackers attacking the universities of Cambridge, Manchester and Wolverhampton.  Systems were affected at all sites.  The disruption is the latest reported attack by Anonymous Sudan.  It is thought the attacks are related to the UK's support of Israel in the Gaza conflict.

The ICO has confirmed a data breach from Kent councils.  The breach was reported by three Kent councils who share the same IT support provider.  Canterbury, Dover and Thanet councils continue to be hampered by the disruptions of onlines services following a cyber incident.

The City of London Police is warning schools across the UK to be vigilant against phishing attacks targeting school networks. Multiple schools have reported receiving suspicious emails containing malicious attachments that have infected their networks with malware.

Once infected, the school's email systems are used to send malicious attachments to other schools.

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Help and Advice against Phi

We have previously reported how the Rhysida Ransomware has focused on attacking the education sector.  Recently the CISA, FBI and MS-ISAC have released a new joint Cyber Security Advisory to disseminate known Rhysida ransomware indicators of compromise, detection methods, tactics, techniques and procedures identified through recent investigations.

As a data protection officer we are seeing a rise in the number of cyber attacks on organisations.  We often find that the fact an actual crime has been committed is sometimes overlooked in the panic and need to recover data and get operations back up and running.  According to the National Crime Agency (NCA) cyber crime continues to rise in scale and complexity, affecting essential services, businesses and private individuals.  Cyber crime costs the UK billions of pounds, causes

The National Cyber Security Centre looks back at it's key developments and highlights over the last year in it's 2023 annual review. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ, is the UK’s technical authority for cyber security.