NWR Cyber attack on British Library post mortem report...may be of interest to the tech folk hereabouts

[Alistair Scott]

www.bl.uk/home/british-library-cyber-incident-review-8-march-2024.pdf

 

[Thom Blach]

Was there ever any better justification for actual books? one day the internet will inevitably be wiped out, and then where will we be?

 

[Nigel Lierop]

Thank you

 

[Dan Vyvyan]

Was there ever any better justification for actual books? one day the internet will inevitably be wiped out, and then where will we be?

When it was announced that the Library contained all books, the first reaction was unbounded joy. All men felt themselves the possessors of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal problem, no world problem, whose eloquent solution did not exist

 

[Charles Muttar]

www.bl.uk/home/british-library-cyber-incident-review-8-march-2024.pdf

My phone says this can't be downloaded securely!!

 

[Phil David]

It should be pretty obvious to anyone now that if you have data that you would not like to be compromised by a cyber attack, don't make it accessible via the internet. It could hardly be simpler.

 

[Jeremy Caan]

It should be pretty obvious to anyone now that if you have data that you would not like to be compromised by a cyber attack, don't make it accessible via the internet. It could hardly be simpler.

Their cloud services were less affected: 'We expect the balance between cloud-based and onsite technologies to shift substantially towards the former in the next 18 months, which will come with its own risks that need to be actively managed, even as we substantially reduce security and other risks by making this change.'

 

[Tom De Vecchi]

Was there ever any better justification for actual books? one day the internet will inevitably be wiped out, and then where will we be?

The government recently ran a consultation about a proposal to digitise archived wills going back 150 years, with a view to saving money by giving up storage of (ie destroying) the hard copies. The reaction of the legal / historian / genealogy communities can be summarised thus: this is insane.

 

[Paul Benny]

I think BL must be credited on open publication of their investigation report. The instincts of so many organisations - private or public sectors are to deny and conceal when an incident occurs - perhaps understandable when the media/the public want to heap opprobrium on those in charge. Scrimping on maintaining IT systems and security is an "easy" cost saving. Until it's not. Many of the recommendations come down to keeping systems and people up to date.