Monday mornings aren’t always the easiest transition when you’ve been out and about enjoying the most of the weekend. However for some office employees the Monday blues are the least of their worries, due to a mass security attack that has been detrimental to businesses worldwide. The attack took place on Friday, as it spread like wildfire in the form of fake emails like invoices, security alerts and job offers. The virus particularly targets computers that are currently functioning on old software programmes such as Windowx XP, that haven’t recently upgraded to the latest security updates.

The aftermath of attack on Friday meant that some NHS hospitals had to cancel operations, and emergency patients had to be redirected to other A&E’s who were not affected. However a security blogger who goes by the alias “MalwareTech”, managed to cease the spread of the virus after paying a small fee, to register the website’s domain name on a website full of drivel. Being hailed a hero the public thought that this was a means to an end, however this did not deter the hackers and other businesses where then effected.The virus “Ransomware” took control of business files and demanded $300 (£230) to have restored access. An analysis run by the BBC of three accounts linked to the ransoms suggested that $38,000 (£29,400) had been paid by this morning. Europol director Rob Wainwright said “We’ve never seen something on this scale”, and organisations like DeutshceBahn, FedEx and Nissan were on the long list of the 200,000 companies that were affected.

Since Friday it has been recognised that the malware was made available online on 14thApril, through a dump by a group called Shadow Brokers, which claimed last year to have stolen a cache of “cyber weapons” from the National Security Agency (NSA).A statement from Microsoft president and chief Legal officer Brad Smith, has criticised flaws in the US governmentas a result of this magnitude attack. Read more about what Brad has to say http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39915440

Today companies across the globe are continually striving to fix the problem in their systems whilst hoping to avoid the ransomware demands. If your business was lucky enough to have not been affected then we suggest you update your security systems immediately, and proceed with caution when opening emails with the topics suggested above. If you have any further issues or you need some professional support, please get in contact as soon as possible!