Why more transparency around cyber attacks is a good thing for everyone
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has recently released a joint blog post with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) outlining why transparency around cyber attacks is a good thing for everyone.
The blog aims to dispel common misconceptions that can discourage organisation from reporting a cyber attack and highlights our joint concerns about what happens behind the scenes of unreported cyber attacks, particularly ransomware ones.
NCSC and ICO deal with the fallout from serious cyber attacks every day. Our responsibilities are different, but we both work on incidents that can take down businesses, severely impact national services and infrastructure, and massively disrupt people’s day-to-day lives. You’ll be familiar with some of the headlines and it’s not a pretty picture.
But we are increasingly concerned about what happens behind the scenes of the attacks we don’t hear about, particularly the ransomware ones. They are the attacks that aren’t reported to us and pass quietly by, pushed to one side, the ransoms paid to make them go away. And if attacks are covered up, the criminals enjoy greater success, and more attacks take place. We know how damaging this is.
In this blog we look at why it’s in everyone’s interests to be more open about cyber attacks, by exploring – and dispelling – some of the myths around responding to cyber attacks.