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Donald Trump has been roundly criticised for his most recent comments downplaying the severity of Covid-19.  It appears that he has inferred from the fact that he appears to have had a mild form of the disease (although he is not out of the woods yet) that all Covid-19 infections are mild and there is […]

The National Cyber Security Centre has issued a specific alert to higher education institutions after a recent spike in attacks.  In particular, both Northumbria and Newcastle Universities have come under attack in the last few weeks.  These attacks come at the most critical time in the academic year, as universities recruit new students and prepare […]

We have studiously refrained from giving a running commentary on the Covid-19 crisis in our blog, but I was intrigued to hear the Archbishop of Canterbury’s comments reported this morning on the need to delegate elements of the crisis response to a local level.  This struck a particular chord because I used to use the […]

This is certainly not a new book (the most recent edition came out in 2018), but I only recently became aware of its existence and relevance to risk and crisis management.  Richards Heuer enjoyed a distinguished career in the CIA and wrote the book primarily for his fellow intelligence professionals (and consumers of intelligence such […]

A number of prominent UK universities are amongst hundreds of organisations globally whose data has been stolen in a ransomware attack on cloud-computing provider Blackbaud.  Remarkably, it has emerged that Blackbaud was attacked back in May but waited two months to inform its users.  It has also emerged that they paid an undisclosed ransom in […]

The BBC have published a fascinating birds-eye view of a ransomware attack at the University of California San Francisco this week.  Acting on a tip-off, the BBC were able to follow the on-line ransom negotiations as they happened, culminating in the payment of $1.14m.  We can only speculate, but the willingness of the university to […]

There are many interesting lessons to learn in the unfolding saga at on-line sports retailer Wiggle… Customers first started raising concerns over two weeks ago about orders being placed on their Wiggle accounts (and payments taken) without their knowledge.  Some people also reported that they had been locked out of their accounts.  The company’s initial […]

We blogged back in January about how GDPR fines were starting to bite.  Now, drawing on data from GDPR Enforcement Tracker, we take a first look at the fines that have been issued under GDPR specifically for data breaches. The database lists 70 fines related to data breaches, ranging in value from €300 to €10m.  […]

There has been much media coverage today of “Exercise Iris”, an exercise delivered to Scottish Health Boards in March 2018 by the Scottish Government’s Health Protection Division.  The exercise scenario was based on an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Scotland, and media reporting has focused on why the exercise recommendations were not […]

I’m sure I wasn’t the only person to be somewhat surprised at the news that Baroness Dido Harding has been appointed to oversee the implementation of the new NHS Covid-19 app.  Rightly or wrongly, she will always be associated with the massive data breach at TalkTalk in October 2015 and has received significant criticism for […]