Why ‘WannaCry’ Malware Caused Chaos for National Health Service in U.K.

The NHS was among the victims of the WannaCry malware, which “held to ransom” thousands of institutions across the world who were running an outdated version of the Windows operating system. The issue has led to fierce debate over the decision not to upgrade health service computers from Windows XP; approximately a fifth of NHS trusts were affected. The issue is fraught, because restructuring software to match hardware is a lengthy and expensive process. Before the malware attack, FoI data showed that 90% of NHS computers still ran on Windows XP.