Firms advised to put plans on paper in case of cyber-attack

"Joe TidyCyber correspondent, BBC World Service Getty Images People should plan for potential cyber-attacks by going back to pen and paper, according to the latest advice. The government has written to chief executives across the country strongly recommending that they should have physical copies of their plans at the ready as a precaution. A recent spate of hacks has highlighted the chaos that can ensue when hackers take computer systems down."

"Organisations need to "have a plan for how they would continue to operate without their IT, (and rebuild that IT at pace), were an attack to get through," said Richard Horne, chief executive of the NSCS. Firms are being urged to look beyond cyber-security controls toward a strategy known as "resilience engineering", which focuses on building systems that can anticipate, absorb, recover, and adapt, in the event of an attack. Preferably the plans should be in paper form or stored offline, the agency suggests."

"Although the total number of hacks that the NCSC dealt with in the first nine months of this year was, at 429, roughly the same as for a similar period last year, there was an increase in hacks with a bigger impact. The number of "nationally significant" incidents represented nearly half, or 204, of all incidents. Last year only 89 were in that category."

Organisations are advised to prepare for cyber-attacks by keeping physical, offline copies of critical plans and procedures. The National Cyber-Security Centre reports an increase in higher-impact incidents this year. Criminal hacks on Marks and Spencer, The Co-op and Jaguar Land Rover produced empty shelves and halted production as companies struggled without computer systems. Firms are urged to have plans to continue operations without IT and to rebuild IT rapidly if an attack succeeds. The recommended approach emphasizes resilience engineering: anticipating, absorbing, recovering, and adapting to incidents. NCSC recorded 429 incidents in nine months, 204 of which were nationally significant versus 89 last year.

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