No cash to prevent the NHS Cybermen

No cash to prevent the NHS Cybermen.

A Southport Health Watchdog has asked the Information Commissioners to look into the ramshackle anarchy of NHS data management which has been revealed in the recent Ransom malware attack.

Councillor Tony Dawson, who leads the Southport contingency on the local Health & Adult Care Scrutiny Committee says that it is possible that the Cybermen who led this attack may have done the NHS a favour.

He says:

“This was a fairly small and simple attack and relatively easy to address. Had the Cyber bullies been just a little more sophisticated they could have done untold damage. As it is, they have forced the NHS nationally to take a serious look at how they allow our precious personal data to be maintained by a thousand and one bodies on different systems with different security.”

“It is more than likely that a whole host of other government systems will be found to be vulnerable to Cyber attacks, paralysis, destruction or ransom because of the obsession with privatisation and politicians relentless shirking of central responsibility for all sorts of government functions.”

“Perhaps, if the Southport NHS Trust had not wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds on inefficiently-conducted disciplinary proceedings, they might have had a few bob to spare for the odd microsoft security patch or upgrade from Windows XP? But the attacks would still have taken place on dozens of other hospitals and GP surgeries nationwide”.

“I have written to the Information Commissioner’s Office, asking them if they will consider conducting an Inquiry into the systems which the National Health Service nationally permits to govern the maintenance and retrieval of personal data within NHS Trusts, General Practitioners etc.  It appears to me, on the face of it, that the government have completely abrogated their responsibility to maintain our national NHS database safe to a kind of ‘institutionalised anarchy’. The irony is that overall this will probably have cost the NHS massively more than a centralised security contract, properly administered would have done.