Only 6 ransomware attacks on the UK's NHS since WannaCry worm hit in 2017 – report

The NHS has suffered 209 successful ransomware attacks since 2014, according to new figures based on Freedom of Information requests, but with a dramatic improvement since 2017, the year WannaCry ransomware hit the health service. The figures, posted in a report from research company Comparitech, show the following since 2014 …

[Mike 137]

Were any of these attacks on the NHS?

I strongly suspect that none of these were attacks on the NHS in the sense of the NHS being targeted. More likely they are self propagating shotgun attacks on all and sundry but the NHS is wide open to anything that comes along. So were gazillions of other organisations world wide in the case of WannaCry.

If the general standard of robustness was higher, most of these "attacks" would simply bounce off harmlessly. We have to dispel the myth of the Űberhacker and the "secure" victim and face facts - almost no organisation really gives two hoots about cyber threats until they get hit. I remember talking to a senior director of an international corporation about the cyber threat and he responded "but we don't have enemies..."

[Doctor Syntax]

"That said, Comparitech's statistics are less valuable than they might be because the incidents are not weighted by their severity and scope."

Quite. What's a day's downtime? A day down on a PC with a single user isn't the same as a day down on a server with 100 users.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also downtime isn't already recorded in the NHS, focus is on responding and restoration - not keeping track of down time of individual PCs which may be over dozens or even 100+ sites.

We responded to these FOIs, worth pointing out that answering FOIs costs the NHS a bloody fortune and rarely gives the answers people want as they ask the wrong damn question.

[Cuddles]

Obvious problem

"20 per cent of hospitals refused or failed to respond to the survey"

Presumably because their PCs have been locked by ransomware.