FEWER PEOPLE FALLING FOR SCAMS
Fewer people are falling for tech-support scams, according to Microsoft’s annual survey of security behaviour ( www.snipca.com/29444), which involved 16,000 people in 16 countries, including the UK. It found that only 25 per cent of people think companies will contact them out of the blue about a problem with their computer, down from 37 per cent in 2016. Microsoft said people have developed a “healthy scepticism” about unexpected emails, pop-ups and phone calls.
There is “little doubt” the UK will be targeted soon by a cyber-attack that threatens lives, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has said. It makes the warning in its second annual review, which also reveals it thwarted more than 10 attacks a week in the past two years. Most of these were launched by “nation states in some way hostile to the UK”.
Ciaran Martin, head of the NCSC, said the attacks “were undertaken by groups of computer hackers directed, sponsored or tolerated by the governments of those countries”.
Since it was founded in 2016, the centre has handled 1,167 cyber-attacks. Mr Martin added that while none of these were category one incidents (posing a threat to life), he thinks such an attack will happen in the near future.
The largest incident so far was the Wannacry ransomware attack in May 2017, which crippled the computer systems of at least 80 NHS trusts, leading to the cancellation of 20,000 GP and hospital appointments.
This was classified a category two attack, defined as having “a serious impact on a large portion of the population, economy or government”. The Department of Health recently revealed that Wannacry cost the NHS a total of £92 million, including £72m for IT support.
Mr Martin described hacks from nations as “the most acute threat”, but said the most “chronic” risk comes from “high-volume cybercrime” that tries to scam the public. To minimise this, between mid-2017 and 2018 the NCSC forced the closure of almost 140,000 fake sites designed to look like they were made by banks, government agencies and businesses.
It says that since launching the Active Cyber Defence strategy in 2017 to fight phishing, the UK’S share of global attacks has dropped from 5.3 to 2.4 per cent.