Recommendation 9

Organised criminal groups use ransomware and data extortion to make money.10 They do this by stealing and encrypting victims’ data and then demanding a ransom or threatening to the leak the data. In October 2023, 5 Q 2; C&AG’s Report, paras 4, 6 6 C&AG’s Report, paras 6, 22 7 Q 4 8 Qq 4–5 9 Q 5 10 Q 5 8 the British Library suffered a ransomware attack, which it was still recovering from a year after the attack.11 The cyber attackers encrypted most of the British Library’s servers, leaked around 500,000 records and stole several terabytes of data. The Cabinet Office told us that responding to the attack cost the British Library between £6 million and £7 million.12 We asked the Cabinet Office for an example of a cyber attack that had affected the public. The Cabinet Office pointed to the June 2024 ransomware attack on Synnovis, a supplier of NHS pathology services, which led to two NHS foundation trusts postponing more than 10,000 appointments and put a significant amount of data at risk. Ransomware attacks on Hackney, and Redcar and Cleveland councils, have also disrupted public services.13