For Ferrán Orsola , an engineer at the cybersecurity company Fire Eye , the Wannacry incident on May 12 was just the beginning of a business that has just taken off: cybersecurity; as he explained today at DigitasLBI's #UnicornUniversity.
The ransomware virus entered the intranet of the largest Spanish communications company, Telefónica . The company was forced to warn its employees over the loudspeaker to turn off their computers, a containment strategy to avoid further damage.
Telefónica CDO Chema Alonso was caught off guard by the attack and responded with some rather unfortunate statements on Twitter. "As many of you know, Telefónica's internal security is not one of my direct responsibilities. But we are all part of security," Alonso was on vacation when the events occurred.
According to Orsola, the hackers planned the attack for Friday for obvious benin phone number reasons: the work routine was coming to an end and workers would not be able to fix the damage so quickly from home.
Perhaps Telefónica should have been better prepared for possible attacks, but if there is one thing that cannot be blamed on the company, it is its rapid response. As soon as the attack occurred, the company notified its associated companies that a cyber breach had occurred and sent a press release.
The truth is that WannaCry had hardly any economic consequences for Telefónica. Within four hours of the threat, it was already a thing of the past; an anonymous boy discovered the domain to kill the virus.
It is still unclear who was responsible and the media have made several accusations, but none of them are certain. On May 12, more than 3,200 articles were published in our country on this subject, making public information that had not been confirmed. The Guardian even attributed the attack to North Korea.
There is still a long way to go, but it is certainly in our hands, as journalists, the same people who write and publish the news, to report correctly on this issue and raise awareness among citizens and companies about possible attacks and how to act. The Wannacry case is still pending resolution and no one has wanted to delve into the heart of the matter.
Although technology is advancing faster than companies' communication and security policies, an effort must be made to try to gain a little ground and respond as soon as possible to these problems. Ferrán Orsola is clear: "Protection and prevention are as important as the response."