British Library report on attack

Very interesting read. The British Library has released its report on their ransomware attack. Hit at the end of October last year and still recovering. Kudos to them for releasing this.

Some key systems couldn’t be restored as they were just unsupported or just couldn’t be moved to the new infrastructure.

Technical debt: we should all know which are the really problematic ones (actually we do know I bet). If you cannot replace, upgrade or move it - for whatever reason be that budget, resource or willpower - it should be continuously flagged in the risk register.

I’ve no doubt somebody was moaning about it for a long time before this. This is not uncommon.

Edit: I wrote this with fellow Tech Leaders in mind. For everyone else who won’t read this and won’t want to get into the details - an interesting aspect…

The attackers searched on systems for keywords such as ‘passport’ and ‘confidential’ and exfiltrated a lot of personal data from people storing things on their work machines. You see? There’s a reason we nag you in the annual training about what information to keep. Boring terms such as acceptable use policy, data classification and data retention.

Simple terms - don’t use your work device for personal things.