{"id":2535,"date":"2017-06-06T10:57:21","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T17:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/industry\/blog\/uncategorized\/wannacry-ransomware-attack-lessons-learned\/"},"modified":"2023-05-31T16:23:50","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T23:23:50","slug":"wannacry-ransomware-attack-lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/industry\/blog\/healthcare\/2017\/06\/06\/wannacry-ransomware-attack-lessons-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"WannaCry ransomware attack \u2013 Lessons Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 12th hundreds of thousands of people (and machines) woke up to this screen informing them that their files \u201chave been encrypted\u201d. And over the next week, we learned that the WannaCry ransomware attack had the potential to be extremely damaging to multiple industries. At last count, the ransomware was found in over 150 countries and infested over 300,000 computers across 100,000 businesses in multiple industries including retail, manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, finance. This wasn\u2019t just about healthcare.<\/p>\n

What did we learn from this attack?<\/h2>\n

I spoke to customers and partners after the attack. Some, rightly so, are very concerned about the next attack and even saw this as a \u201cpractice run\u201d. This attack taught us a few lessons that we need to proactively address. The cyberworld was fortunate that the \u201ckill switch\u201d was accidently found. But, we can be better prepared. Here are a few of my observations and recommendations:<\/p>\n