Why some cyber-attacks hit harder than others

While this incident did not make the largest news headlines in the United States media, the British Library continues to be affected by a cyberattack conducted by a Russian hacker group, Rhysida, in October of 2023. This attack prevented access to IT systems, and the group demanded a ransom of 20 bitcoin, or 600,000 pounds (760,740 U.S. dollars). After refusal of payment, 600 GB of private data was leaked on the dark web.
The library has stated that it will take an extensive time to even begin to review the data that was lost, and some sources estimate that this process could take up to a year. While in January of this year, the online catalog was republished, it remains incomplete.
While the author then continues to state that this amount of time for recovery is unusual (citing that a large majority of businesses and charities can recover within 24 hours), an important factor has been overlooked, which is even raised by the author’s next point but not truly addressed. In their next example, they state that another case of a long recovery time included the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, which is still recovering from a cyber attack in late 2020. Those that take a long time to recover, in this case, are both large organizations that arguably are used to traditional models of organization. New businesses and companies benefit from the experience and case studies of other older organizations falling victim to cyber-attacks. In this case, the British Library is an old and renowned institution – it would be reasonable to state that it would not be extremely familiar with its own cybersecurity. Especially for older, more traditional organizations, this problem needs to be quickly addressed. As mentioned in class, the number and frequency of cyberattacks only continues to climb each year. One could reason that as these attacks continue, the groups grow in confidence and are emboldened to act against larger institutions, which coincidentally have the weakest protection.