{"id":56107,"date":"2024-05-20T09:32:09","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T09:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/british-librarys-candid-ransomware-comms-driven-by-emotional-intelligence\/"},"modified":"2024-05-20T09:32:09","modified_gmt":"2024-05-20T09:32:09","slug":"british-librarys-candid-ransomware-comms-driven-by-emotional-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/british-librarys-candid-ransomware-comms-driven-by-emotional-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"British Library’s candid ransomware comms driven by ’emotional intelligence’"},"content":{"rendered":"

CyberUK<\/span> Emotional intelligence was at the heart of the British Library’s widely hailed response to its October ransomware attack, according to CEO Roly Keating.<\/p>\n

The British Library’s (BL) ransomware attack last year was one of the most damaging in recent memory, at least in the UK. The transparency of the organization’s response over the following months was hailed as what should be the industry standard.<\/p>\n

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At no point… did we engage with the perpetrators<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Keating said from the outset the Library was acutely aware of how many partners, scholars, and researchers rely on its services worldwide, so the plan was to communicate often, even if that was just a short update saying very little.<\/p>\n

“But I think it’s probably fair to say early on it was all quite dry; rapidly we began to realize we had to be a little bit more emotionally intelligent than that,” he told delegates at British cyberintelligence talkshop CyberUK 2024 last week. <\/p>\n

“We were having very strong feelings of frustration, anger, anxiety. Those feelings were shared by our staff, whose data had been lost. Our users’ data had been taken away and published. So, gradually we increased our focus on wellbeing, paying attention to how people were feeling.”<\/p>\n