John Kelly, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has said a DHS-led interagency effort helped prevent the WannaCry ransomware from spreading to new computers across the U.S., Nextgov reported Wednesday.
“We defended the country from the biggest cyber onslaught in history and we were successful in keeping it out of our country with the exception of a tiny, tiny, tiny number of computers,” Kelly told a House subcommittee Wednesday.
The report said DHS’ Computer Emergency Readiness Team disseminated alerts to potential targets about imminent cyber threats and the department recommended companies and consumers to update software programs as well as install patches regularly to mitigate potential vulnerabilities.
Europol found that WannaCry affected at least 200,000 computer users around the world as well as global companies such as FedEx, Renault and Telefonica.
