Security News > 2020 > November > Protecting the NHS: NCSC fended off lots of meddling aimed at UK health orgs while ransomware ramped up

Issuing the org's annual report today, NCSC chief exec Lindy Cameron, who formally replaced founding chief Ciaran Martin in the summer, said: "This review outlines the breadth of remarkable work delivered by the NCSC in the past year, largely against a backdrop of the shared global crisis of coronavirus."

"We've added a significant amount of support to healthcare," added NCSC ops director Paul Chichester, referring to a number of incidents, some higher profile than others, during the year.

This Active Cyber Defence programme is now in place across 235 public-sector health organisations, including NHS trusts, and NCSC also boasted of scanning a million IP addresses "To check for weaknesses".

China did not feature at all and neither did Iran nor North Korea, traditionally the countries whose governments have no qualms about hacking the UK. Ransomware attacks picked up by NCSC broadly increased in line with what industry has also said during 2020, with this year's report mentioning not-quite-police-force the National Crime Agency as an increasingly important partner when responding to ransomware attacks.

NCSC tech director Dr Ian Levy told The Register: "The vast majority are still hosted in normal commercial hosting sites. The ones that everybody uses," explaining that the free tiers of these services make it "Easy" for criminals and their mates to set up shop overnight.

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https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/11/03/ncsc_annual_report_nhs_ransomware/