The UK government has announced they will invest £21 million to beef up cybersecurity within the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).
This news comes in the wake of the recent WannaCry ransomware attack that hit the NHS, locking staff out of their computers and leaving patients without the care they need.
The £21M will be split amongst the 27 trauma centers and hospitals across England. The funding will be used to update IT systems, improve staff training, and raise awareness on how to deal with today’s cyber threats.
Health Minister Lord O’Shaughnessy claims, “People must be confident that systems are secure and robust. Recent incidents, including the May 2017 ransomware attack, which affected many other countries’ services as well as our own health and care system, have shown that the NHS can protect essential services in the face of a cyber-attack, but they have also underlined the need for organizations to implement essential, strong data security standard.”
The government is also working on the most cost effective and fastest way to support the NHS migrate from unsupported operating systems like Windows XP.
In addition to this funding, the UK will also be implementing General Data Protection Regulation which will go into effect May 2018, leaving organizations across the EU scrambling to prepare for the upcoming deadline.
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