Microsoft and NHS Agreement: Too Little Too Late?

With growing advancements in all things technology, the vulnerability of systems is becoming more apparent. However, this inevitably leads to serious progression in cyber security…

In the wake of a huge attack on the NHS, that affected 20% of their systems, the NHS have signed a security agreement with Microsoft. This agreement will cover all NHS organisations within the UK until June 2018 and includes updates across Windows systems within the NHS, including the likes of Windows XP.

This oversight wouldn’t have come cheap, Juniper reported that “The cost of cybercrime is expected to reach over $2 trillion by 2019”. Although this statistic may seem shocking, especially considering the increasing amount of security software that is becoming available, there are still many companies that are still at risk.

These security measures are no doubt an essential right now in preventing any further attacks. But, the NHS are not the only ones at risk. Advanced ‘Shadowpad’ malware has been found in products sold by Netsarang. This ‘back door’ was discovered in software used by hundreds of banks, pharmaceutical manufacturers and energy companies. ARS Techina reported that “The activation was ultimately triggered by a specially designed domain name system TXT record for a specific domain name. The domain changed based on the current month and year”.

Company officials of Netsarang have issued the following statement “It has been confirmed that NetSarang's infrastructure was compromised. We've created a completely new and separate infrastructure and have wiped every single device which will be placed into this new infrastructure”. It’s clear Netsarang are ready to tackle this problem, although they’re not the only ones that could be affected. Symantech reported that “Over 75% of all legitimate websites contain unpatched vulnerabilities”.

Is the security agreement too little too late? Or is it the best way forward?

Let me know!

I'm an expert in this field and would happily recommend security software companies such as Watchguard, Panda Security and Symantec. If you’d like to know anything else, contact me!