Critical infrastructure firms face crackdown over poor cybersecurity
Eerke Boiten, De Montfort University An EU-wide cybersecurity law is due to come into force in May to ensure that organisations providing critical national infrastructure services have robust systems in place to withstand cyber attacks. The legislation will insist on a set of cybersecurity standards that adequately address events such as last year’s WannaCry ransomware attack , which crippled some ill-prepared NHS services across England . But, after a consultation process in the UK ended last autumn, the government had been silent until now on its implementation plans for the forthcoming law. The NIS Directive (Security of Network and Information Systems) was adopted by the European parliament in July 2016. Member states, which for now includes the UK , were given “21 months to transpose the directive into their national laws and six months more to identify operators of essential services.” The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DC...