A university academic has weighed in on the recent cyber attack on the NHS.

Middlesex University’s Dr Mahdi Aiash has spoken out about the effects of the virus which infected NHS systems on Friday, causing thousands of appointments to be cancelled and Accident and Emergency services to close until earlier this week.

The WannaCry ransomware demanded payment for computers to be unlocked, and affected 47 NHS trusts including some ambulance services across the UK.

Dr Aiash said: ““Hackers are not magicians; they simply make use of our mistakes.

“Following simple mitigation steps makes the next cyber attack less likely, but never impossible.”

Dr Aiash, who teaches Cyber Security MSc at the university in Hendon, has written a full blog to help students understand how they can beat the ransomware in future attacks, in what he suggests may become a “worryingly regular occurrence.”

The blog can be found here.