Cyber attack leaves tech company unharmed says CEO

Sheffield technology group Servelec has insisted that none of its systems were compromised by the worldwide cyber attack on Friday.

The company is a supplier to the NHS, local government, and other providers of critical national infrastructure in the UK.

The NHS was one of the organisations worst hit during the attack, but Sheffield company Servelec has confirmed that no customer data or information was lost from Servelec systems of through the hosted environment.

Six of the 61 NHS Trusts affected are Servelec customers, however the company said that their patient administration systems were not contaminated.

Alan Stubbs, chief executive officer, Servelec Group Plc said: “The response from Servelec’s team to Friday’s ransomware attack highlights the proactivity and quality of our people. I would like to thank everyone who played a part in minimising the effect of the attack on our customers to ensure minimal disruption to patient care.

“The agile and responsive hosting environment offered by Servelec allowed us to react promptly to the issue and to reassure our customers of the security of their system.”

The malicious ransomware attack last week left systems across the globe in tatters, including the NHS. Organisations in Europe and Russia were worst affected, with an “accidental hero” finding the kill switch before it reached full potential in the US.

Analysts said that the attack was worsened by older operating systems like Windows XP which some NHS computers still use, and a lack of software updates. Microsoft had spotted the problem in March and provided patches to update operating systems, but many users had not yet installed them.

Across the globe, Renault factories in France were forced to halt production, Russia’s interior ministry reported 1,000 of its computers were affected, whilst telecoms and gas companies were hit in Spain and FedEx in the US was also involved, despite the ransomware not making full impact there.