Patient records are now more valuable on the dark web than credit card details, it was claimed yesterday.
Sir Nick Partridge, the former deputy chairman of NHS Digital, told the Hay Festival: “Systems [to protect] are there but there’s a growing understanding that patient records are now much more valuable on the dark web than credit card ratings.
“They sell for more money so we can only expect this level of cyberattack to increase in a very fragmented NHS and it’s going to be a growing challenge.”
Last month computers at hospitals and GP surgeries were among thousands hit in a global ransomware attack that wreaked havoc on services. Sir Nick said that NHS Digital, the organisation’s information technology provider, had warned trusts of the dangers of cyberattacks a month earlier.
“What has gone unnoticed are the large number of hospital trusts that acted on that alert and protected their system and consequently didn’t go down,” he said. “Those that did [had] ignored that alert.” Dame Fiona Caldicott, the government’s national data guardian, told the festival she was unhappy that a report she produced last March at the government’s request about cybersecurity was shelved because politicians were distracted by the Brexit poll and aftermath. “If I use the word ‘impatient’ about how we feel about it not having been published, I think you will understand that.”