NHS Trust Announces Major Incident for ‘Cyber ​​Security Reasons’

The UK NHS Trust declared a major incident and canceled all outpatient appointments, citing “cybersecurity reasons”.

Wirral University Teaching Hospital (WUTH) also urged the public to only attend A&E for “genuine emergencies”.

A spokesperson for the NHS Trust said on 25 November: “A major incident has been declared at the Trust for cyber security reasons. “We have business continuity processes in place and our priority continues to ensure patient safety.”

The trust is responsible for a group of hospitals in north-west England, including Arrowe Park Hospital, Clatterbridge Hospital and Wirral Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

An update on the Trust’s X (formerly Twitter) account on 26 November confirmed that all outpatient appointments on the sites had been cancelled.

Incident Update
We are responding to a cybersecurity issue. Patient care remains our priority.

All outpatient appointments are canceled today; We will contact you to rearrange.

Please attend A&E for emergencies only.
For non-urgent care use NHS 111, a GP or pharmacist. pic.twitter.com/Yh7NO79Tsi

— Wirral NHS Hospitals – Arrowe Park & ​​Clatterbridge (@WUTHnhs) 26 November 2024

At the time of writing, no other details regarding the nature of the incident have been provided and it has not been confirmed to be a cyberattack.

Local newspaper, Liverpool Echo, He quoted an employee at the Trust as saying: “All is not well. Everything is done electronically, so there is no access to records, results or anything, so we have to do everything manually, which is really difficult. “The damage is huge. “

NHS Hospitals Under Cyber ​​Siege

The WUTH incident is the latest damaging cyber incident affecting UK NHS Hospitals in 2024.

Ransomware attack on pathology provider Synnovis in June caused cancellation Thousands of elective procedures and acute outpatient appointments at various hospitals in London. Attackers reportedly stole sensitive patient data.

In March, Scottish NHS Trust Dumfries and Galloway It has been confirmed that patient clinical data was accessed and published online by hackers following a ransomware attack on their systems.

Commenting on the latest incident, SonicWall EMEA Executive Vice President Spencer Starkey said: The healthcare industry is a primary target for cybercriminalsRansomware actors in particular, due to the sensitive data held and the potential to cause significant real-world disruption and damage.

“Not only do these attacks risk the potential for exposure of patient data, any significant IT issue that halts patient care is also life-threatening. The consequences of an attack on the healthcare industry can be catastrophic and require the utmost amount of time, money and effort to secure it.” “It is important,” he commented.

Trevor Dearing, Director of Critical Infrastructure at Illumio, commented: “In the case of (WUTH), it is positive to see business continuity plans in place, but any compromise to patient services could put lives at risk. It is vital that all hospitals remain focused.” To reduce the impact of attacks by developing containment capabilities to reduce the impact on critical services.”