Disruption to NHS services after cyber attack

A major outage of NHS computer systems last Thursday led to fears of delays in services over the weekend.

 

A security issue was noticed around 7am according to Advanced, the software provider. The system affected is used to refer patients for care, dispatch ambulances, book out-of-hours appointments, and issue emergency prescriptions. NHS 111 services were also affected.

With worries that the issue would take a few days to resolve, people were warned of delays when accessing these services.

Pulse, an industry magazine, reports that GPs in London were warned last week that they may see a rise in patients directed from NHS 111 after the system outage. They describe how 111 call handlers have been ‘working on paper’ as the system is down, which is prolonging response times.

According to Pulse, the outage has affected the electronic referral process, and so NHS 111 has been struggling to book patients directly into GP appointments. In an attempt to mitigate this, 111 will prioritise making telephone bookings, and GPs have been asked to manage calls where possible instead of redirecting to 111 services.

The chief operating officer at Advanced, Simon Short, confirmed the incident was due to a cyber-attack. He said that “early intervention from our incident response team contained this issue to a small number of servers representing 2% of our health and care infrastructure.”

Short affirmed that the “protection of services and data is paramount in the actions we have and are taking” and that they will focus on recovering the systems over the weekend and into this week.

While the issues have affected the whole of the UK, the response has varied across the nations.

The Welsh Ambulance service described the outage as “significant” and “far-reaching”. While they say plans are in place to allow services to continue, they warned the weekend would be busier than normal for NHS 111 in Wales. They warned it may take longer than usual for calls to be answered.

However, a spokesperson for NHS England said there was “minimal disruption” and “tried and tested contingency plans are in place for local areas who use this service.”

A Scottish government spokesperson said they were working to understand the impact of the disruption, but “continuity plans” are in place. They are working with other health boards and the National Cyber Security Centre on this issue.

A spokesperson for Northern Ireland’s Department of Health said they were trying to minimise disruption, and, to avoid risk to other services and contain the incident, access to the company’s services from the Health and Social Care system was disabled.

Government ministers are working on a “resilience response” to deal with the cyber-attack, according to Sky News. They report Scottish Health Secretary Humza Yousaf saying ministers are being continually briefed on the incident and are “working closely on a four nations basis” to respond.

While there has been no official confirmation, some suspect that ransomware was involved. Robert Pritchard, a cyber security expert, told the BBC that the attack was likely ransomware and they report that ransomware gangs have been targeting schools and hospitals.

IT Pro describes how ransomware groups have recently been using a double extortion model, where victims have data stolen before they are locked out of their systems. There is normally then a negotiation period, where a ransom is offered to give back system access and stop data leaks.

This incident has not come at a good time for the NHS, as it struggles with the worst staffing crisis in its history and MPs have called for action to deal with the gaps in care provided, the Guardian newspaper reports.

An NHS spokesperson reminded that NHS 111 services are still available, but as usual in an emergency call 999.