British Library finally restores key services a year after cyberattack
The British Library has finally announced that it is finally restoring its key systems a year after suffering a cyberattack that knocked it offline.
The British Library is one of the largest in the world, containing over 150 million items, including 13.5 million printed books.
In October last year, the British Library’s website and online systems suffered a major outage following a cyberattack claimed by the Rhysida ransomware gang.
The threat actor then put the data belonging to the British Library up for sale later that month.
The library was then saddled with huge clean-up costs and delays, finding that its outlay could be between £6 million and £7 million, more than 10 times the £600,000 set by Rhysida for the ransom.
The actual total cost is unknown, but is estimated so far to be around £1.6 million.
While restoration began in January this year, the British Library is currently restoring its key systems.
In a blog post published earlier this month, British Library CEO Sir Roly Keating announced that five services were being restored.
“This month marks the first anniversary of a criminal attack on the library which, as we detailed in a report earlier this year, touched almost every aspect of our public service. As our users and regular readers of this blog know all too well, the journey to regaining full access to our collection and services has been difficult and at times frustrating,” Keating said.
“It is therefore reassuring to be able to announce that as of this week, with the reopening of the National Newspaper Building in Boston Spa – containing some 750 million pages of newspapers and periodicals dating back to the 18th century – we have now restored access. to 100 percent of the library’s print collections that were available before the cyberattack.
Keating said remote ordering, access to the rest of the library’s physical collection, online learning resources, digitized manuscripts and electronic legal deposits were all restored.
“Alongside all of this, we are also planning the next phase of our recovery program, which will take us into the new year,” Keating added.
“Areas we are particularly focused on include our sound archives and our popular and much-missed Ethos resource, made up of 600,000 digitized theses. There will be updates on this and more in future blogs here.
“Longer term, as I mentioned previously, work continues to implement a new end-to-end platform for all of our library services – a vital project that was already in the works before the attack and which, in the long term, will not only bring relief. challenges of the last year, but a better and more integrated service than we have ever been able to offer before.
