Chris Bennett: Cyber threat could cause long-term damage

Anyone attending Optix’s user group meeting in 2016 won’t have been surprised by the WannaCry ransomware attack suffered by many organisations, including the NHS, this week.

As Aviv Abramovich of security firm Check Point Software Technologies told the audience ‘ransomware is heading your way’.

Computer viruses, or malware, used to serve up distasteful advertisements or crash our machines. But it has inevitably evolved to online fraud and extortion. It’s natural that bigger firms will be targeted but there are threats for practices too.

As Abramovich pointed out 63% of companies have downloaded some form of malware. Anti-virus software is useless against unknown threats. Even a year ago he suggested new malware was being generated at the rate of one new program every 34 seconds. Ransomware has generally been pitched at a low level, perhaps a few bitcoins, so sufferers simply pay up to get back to normal.