“Last week, two NHS trusts in Lincolnshire were forced to cancel operations after a virus infected their computer systems. Derriford Hospital in Plymouth was also targeted by hackers and forced to pay a ransom, after its systems were attacked…   …Sky News received responses from 97 NHS trusts. The average annual spend for an NHS trust was £23,040, but six trusts spent at least £100,000. Forty-five NHS trusts were unable to specify their cybersecurity budget at all”

mHealth Insights

I’m not buying this story that there are NHS Trusts that are spending nothing or even as little as £23k/year on IT Security.

Buy an iPhone and you’re getting a device that has had billions spent making it secure – something that was highlighted by the fact that the FBI couldn’t even unlock it.

By the logic used by SkyNews a NHS Trust might say they have zero IT Security spend even though they just spent £10 million buying iPhones and iPads for staff. Similarly a NHS Trust that supported staff who brought in their own (maybe £20 million worth) smartphones to use at work just effectively realised millions of £s worth of cybersecurity for next to nothing.

There’s no denying that NHS Trusts aren’t spending enough in this area but the big gains are in adopting the tools of our time and training staff to use them.