Internal Ministry, the Romanian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, four Indian state
governments, one Indian state police
force and 42 National Health Service
Trusts, choking frontline public health
services in the UK. That’s some
productivity loss.
It took around a month for it all to
happen again. The NotPetya attacks
wreaked a similar, if slightly diminished,
amount of havoc on public institutions
and multinational giants.
not millions, in lost revenue. And that's
before you even pay the ransom.
This doesn't just go for the non-technical
employees, but IT staff too. There are
a variety of cases in which workforces
have done the right thing, for the most
part, only for their IT providers not to
have patched or backed up regularly,
leaving all that good work for nothing.
Losses from ransomware are estimated
to have ballooned 15 times over the last
two years to reach US$5 billion for 2017.
Much of that figure will not even be
74
from ransom payments which often end
up being cheaper than the restoration
costs, data loss and most importantly,
business paralysis that prove so costly.
To be clear, that isn't an endorsement of
paying up, it's merely a warning against
ever having to make that choice.
The scale upon which it can sew
destruction was revealed only a few
months ago. When the WannaCry
ransomware attacks hit in May 2017,
it took down parts of the Chinese
public security bureau, the Russian
FedEx, Russian oil company Rosneft
and the world’s largest advertising
agency, WPP, were all hit with the
ransomware. International consumer
goods giant, Reckitt Benckiser, which
is responsible for household brands
like Dettol, Strepsils and Clearasil said
that the attack could have punched
a £100 million sized hole in the
company’s revenue.
The world’s largest shipping container
business, Maersk, revealed a US$300
million loss a short while after.
Responsible for around 15% of the
globe’s shipping, the NotPetya attacks
took a large swing at the company’s
third quarter results.
Even a month after the attacks, some
companies were still scrambling to make
Issue 03
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