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The UK’s healthcare system is navigating a perfect storm. Chronic staffing shortages, increasing patient demand, and the rapid shift towards digital health records and connected care are all reshaping how services are delivered. From AI-assisted diagnostics to remote consultations and electronic prescribing, technology is now at the heart of the patient journey.
While these innovations bring clear benefits, they also introduce an urgent and complex challenge: healthcare cyber security. The systems that keep hospitals running and care flowing are now prime targets for cybercriminals, and the stakes could not be higher.
Why Healthcare Cyber Security Matters More Than Ever.
Cybercriminals have long recognised the value of healthcare data. Medical records contain a unique mix of personal, financial, and clinical details. This makes them a treasure trove for identity theft, insurance fraud, and even targeted extortion. Unlike a bank card, a patient’s medical history cannot be cancelled or reissued. It is permanent, and that permanence makes it highly valuable.
This value is reflected in the cost of a breach. According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025, healthcare has been the most expensive industry for breaches for 14 consecutive years, with an average cost of USD 7.42 million per incident in 2025. While that’s a reduction from last year’s figure of USD 9.77 million, it still dwarfs other industries. The report also found that healthcare breaches take the longest to identify and contain, 279 days on average, more than five weeks longer than the global average. This extended breach lifecycle gives attackers more time to exploit stolen data, increasing both the financial and reputational damage.
The 2025 Picture: Data from the Verizon Report.
The scale of the threat is clear in the 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. Healthcare experienced 1,710 cyber incidents last year, with 1,542 of them confirmed data breaches. System intrusion, most commonly involving ransomware, has overtaken human error as the leading cause of compromise.
External attackers were responsible for 67% of breaches, but internal threats, whether intentional or accidental, still made up 30%. Financial gain remains the primary motive, driving 90% of attacks. However, there has been a sharp and worrying rise in espionage-related breaches, jumping from just 1% last year to 16%. These quieter, more targeted campaigns aim to steal research, intellectual property, or sensitive operational data, often staying hidden for months before detection.
The Real-World Impact of Cyber Attacks in Healthcare.
A successful attack on a hospital or trust is about far more than stolen records. It can grind core services to a halt, forcing clinicians to revert to pen and paper, increasing the risk of human error, and delaying urgent treatments. The 2017 WannaCry attack, which crippled parts of the NHS, remains a vivid example, but in 2025, attacks are more sophisticated, more targeted, and often harder to contain.
The risks go beyond a single organisation. The NHS is a deeply interconnected network. A breach in one trust, or in a third-party partner, can disrupt services across many locations. In the past year, radiology providers have been hit by cyber incidents. IT support firms and patient transport services were also affected. These attacks created ripple effects that impacted patient care quickly and severely.
Public Trust Is at Stake.
Cyber attacks on healthcare are not only operational crises, they are reputational ones. A YouGov survey of 2,159 adults in the UK, carried out online between 5 July 2024 and 8 July 2024, found that 60% of UK citizens are concerned that critical NHS systems could be disrupted or disabled by cyber attacks and 56% are concerned about patient data exposure.
These concerns are not unfounded. Many NHS trusts continue to run on outdated infrastructure, and budget constraints can delay essential upgrades. Professor Ciaran Martin, former head of the National Cyber Security Centre and now at the University of Oxford, has identified three critical issues facing NHS cyber security: outdated IT systems, the need to pinpoint vulnerable points across the estate, and the importance of maintaining basic security practices. He has warned that “in parts of the NHS estate, it’s quite clear that some of the IT is out of date,” leaving those systems more exposed to attack.
Some trusts have already acknowledged these risks. Delays in replacing end-of-life systems have increased vulnerability. Outdated critical infrastructure has also left parts of the NHS open to disruption. Headlines about stolen records keep appearing. News of cancelled appointments continues to damage public confidence.
The Policy and Regulatory Landscape.
In response, the UK Government has set out its Cyber Security Strategy for Health and Social Care (2023–2030), which outlines the need for stronger governance, better data protection, improved detection capabilities, and faster recovery from incidents. The National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) is also being adopted across the NHS to help measure and improve resilience.
Regulatory change is also on the horizon. Proposals under the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill could introduce new reporting requirements and even prohibit some organisations, including NHS bodies, from paying ransoms. These measures reflect the growing recognition that healthcare cyber security is a matter of national resilience, not just organisational risk management.
From Strategy to Action: Building Resilient Healthcare Cyber Security.
Frameworks and policies are essential, but resilience comes from action. Healthcare organisations need incident response plans that work. These plans should be tested under realistic conditions, not just written and filed away. Strict access controls must be enforced. Continuous monitoring for anomalies is also vital. Staff should receive regular and practical cyber awareness training.
Equally important is securing the supply chain. Contracts with suppliers should include clear cyber security requirements, and trusts should carry out due diligence to ensure that third parties meet the same standards they do. In a connected ecosystem, the weakest link can quickly become everyone’s problem.
Where to Start with Healthcare Cyber Security.
Faced with tight budgets, stretched resources, and daily operational demands, it’s easy for cyber security improvements to be pushed down the NHS and private healthcare agenda. But the reality is that even modest, well-targeted actions can make a measurable difference, provided you know where to begin.
The first step is to decide what matters most. Do not try to secure everything at once. Identify your highest-impact systems and data. These are the areas where an attack would cause the most disruption to patient care. For some organisations, that might be electronic patient record systems. For others, it could be imaging, diagnostics, or infrastructure that keeps wards running. Focus your initial efforts here to reduce the most serious risks quickly.
From there, look for “quick wins” that don’t require huge investment but will instantly strengthen your defences. Implementing multi-factor authentication on key systems, segmenting your network so an attacker can’t move freely, and making sure critical patches are applied promptly can all be done without multi-year projects or extensive downtime.
It’s also worth reviewing your readiness to respond, not just your ability to prevent. Even a basic, well-tested incident response plan will put you ahead of many organisations. That plan should answer simple but vital questions: who leads in the first hour of an incident, how do you keep clinical services running, and what’s the fastest way to communicate with staff and partners?
Finally, start embedding security into everyday decision-making. Cyber security isn’t just an IT function, it’s part of patient safety and service continuity. Involve clinical leaders, operational managers, and even suppliers in the conversation from the outset. That shared responsibility mindset can be one of the most powerful defences you develop.
By starting small, focusing on the highest risks, and building momentum, healthcare organisations can move from feeling overwhelmed by cyber threats to feeling prepared, and ultimately, more resilient.
Cyber Security Is Patient Safety.
Healthcare cyber security is not a back-office IT concern, it is a patient safety imperative. Protecting systems, safeguarding data, and ensuring continuity of care in the face of cyber threats is as vital as maintaining sterile operating theatres or safe medicine handling.
At Secon, we take a proactive, human-centred approach to healthcare cyber security. That means working closely with providers to understand their unique challenges, building tailored defences that work in the real world, and ensuring they have the confidence to deliver care without disruption. Because in healthcare, cyber security isn’t just about defending networks, it’s about protecting lives.