Cybersecurity Strategies for Healthcare (UK): Prevent Attacks Now

Healthcare is a prime target for cybercriminals because downtime impacts patient care immediately. In 2024, London hospitals were forced to cancel thousands of appointments after a ransomware attack on Synnovis, a key pathology provider—an incident that underlined how supplier compromise can disrupt core clinical services.

Across the sector, ransomware remains pervasive. Two-thirds (67%) of healthcare organisations reported being hit in 2024, and mean recovery costs have continued to rise. Meanwhile, average UK breach costs reached £3.58 million in 2024, raising the stakes for boards and regulators.

Why this matters now

• Threat level: NCSC continues to warn that ransomware is the most immediate cyber threat to UK critical infrastructure, including healthcare.

• Regulatory pressure: All organisations accessing NHS patient data must complete the Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT), which maps to the National Data Guardian’s standards and increasingly aligns with NCSC’s Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF).

• Third-party risk: The Synnovis case shows why supplier assurance and segmentation are non-negotiable.

• Cross-border operations: Providers that process EU data or operate clinics in the EU must account for NIS2 obligations now in force within Member States.

A practical framework: prevent, detect, respond, recover

1) Prevent: reduce the attack surface

• Baseline controls aligned to NCSC CAF. Start with governance (GOV), identify and protect (IDP), detect (DE), and minimise impact (MIM). Use CAF outcomes as your control catalogue and audit checklist.
  
  

• Harden identity. Enforce phishing-resistant MFA for clinicians and administrators; block legacy authentication; implement privileged access with just-in-time elevation.
  
  

• Patch the right things first. Operate a risk-based vulnerability programme focusing on internet-facing and patient-safety-critical systems; verify compensating controls when patching is constrained by medical device approvals.
  
  

• Email and endpoint protection. Modern EDR/XDR with automated isolation; sandbox inbound attachments; DMARC enforcement for NHS and supplier domains.
  
  

• Network segmentation. Separate clinical devices, pathology, imaging, and admin networks; implement secure remote access for vendors; use application allow-listing on critical hosts.
  
  

• Supplier assurance. Mandate DSPT (and where appropriate Cyber Essentials Plus) for suppliers handling patient data; require evidence of offline backup and incident runbooks.

2) Detect: shorten time-to-know

• 24×7 monitoring. Route logs to a SOC with healthcare-specific use-cases (e.g., abnormal PACS access, lab system data exfiltration).
  
  

• Threat intel + anomaly detection. Monitor for credential-stuffing and exploitation of widely targeted vulnerabilities affecting healthcare stacks.
  
  

• Tabletop-driven detections. After every exercise, add detections for the techniques you practised (e.g., privileged escalation via domain controller replication).

3) Respond: rehearse before you need it

• Incident Response (IR) playbooks. Maintain playbooks for ransomware, email compromise, and third-party outage. Include patient safety escalation paths and divert procedures.
  
  

• Decision authority. Pre-agree who can isolate clinical domains, shut down interfaces, or fail over to manual processes.
  
  

• Communication. Prepare plain-English comms for patients, regulators, and staff; NCSC guidance emphasises clarity and timeliness.

4) Recover: resilience that works on bad days

• Backups you can restore. Maintain immutable, offline copies; test restore times for EPR, LIMS, PACS, and core imaging; verify bare-metal recovery for critical servers.
  
  

• Service continuity. Prioritise restoration based on clinical risk. Pre-stage “minimum viable service” runbooks for maternity, theatres, A&E, and pathology.
  
  

• Lessons learned. After action reviews must feed DSPT evidence and CAF outcome improvements.

Controls that pay for themselves

• Identity modernisation reduces credential-based ransomware—the joint top entry vector in healthcare in 2024.
  
  

• EDR with isolation limits lateral movement and cuts mean time to recover, a major cost driver highlighted across sector reports.
  
  

• Supply-chain due diligence and contract clauses for security and continuity directly mitigate third-party impact seen in 2024.
  
  

• Board-level metrics: MFA coverage, patching SLAs for internet-facing CVEs, backup restore success rate, and exercise frequency.
  
  

• Cost context: Healthcare’s average breach cost in 2024 was $9.77m globally, while the UK cross-industry average was £3.58m—use these to prioritise investment and justify resilience budgets.

Mapping UK frameworks (quick guide)

• NCSC CAF → Your programme. Use CAF outcomes as headings in your cyber roadmap; assign exec owners per outcome and track quarterly. NCSC

• DSPT → Evidence. Store policies, risk assessments, test results, and supplier attestations in a single evidence pack for DSPT publication deadlines. NHS England Digital

• NHS cyber strategy 2023–2030. Align to the vision of a cyber-resilient health and care system; emphasise culture, collaboration, and data-driven decisions. GOV.UK

• HICP 405(d) (US reference). Useful, especially for multinationals, as a practical control set focused on patient safety. 405d.hhs.gov+1

90-day action plan

Days 0–30: measure and stabilise

• Run a CAF-aligned health check; close critical external exposures; enforce MFA; freeze high-risk legacy protocols. NCSC

Days 31–60: harden and prepare

• Segment clinical networks; deploy EDR; complete IR playbooks; contractually require DSPT/Cyber Essentials Plus from key suppliers. NHS England Digital

Days 61–90: prove resilience

• Full ransomware tabletop with execs; test restores for EPR/LIMS/PACS; publish DSPT updates and remediation evidence. NHS England Digital

Summary & next steps

Cyberattacks are a clinical safety risk as much as an IT problem. With CAF-aligned controls, DSPT evidence, rehearsed incident response, and supplier assurance, healthcare providers can reduce both likelihood and impact—and recover faster when incidents occur. For tailored planning workshops and implementation support, contact Generation Digital.

FAQ

Q1. What are the main cybersecurity threats in healthcare?
Ransomware, business email compromise, and third-party compromise (supplier attacks) are most disruptive, with ransomware highlighted by NCSC as the most immediate threat to UK CNI. Reuters

Q2. How can UK healthcare providers improve cybersecurity quickly?
Enforce MFA, patch internet-facing systems, deploy EDR with isolation, segment clinical networks, test restores, and publish DSPT evidence mapped to NCSC CAF. NCSC

Q3. Why is resilience so important?
Because disruption affects patient services. The 2024 Synnovis attack shows how a single supplier incident can cancel elective care across multiple hospitals—resilience planning limits that impact. NHS England