<p>The Cyber Attacks in the NHS in England</p>

Part of 3. 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:16 pm on 17 May 2017.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:16, 17 May 2017

I quite agree. I’m very happy to publicly acknowledge and thank staff in the NHS Wales Informatics Service, not only for the way in which they have made the case for, and then applied, the additional cyber security measures that we’ve provided across the service, and not only for the fact that they did actually uptake the security updates that apparently did not take place in NHS England, but the fact that over the course of the weekend and into the start of this week, they looked for vulnerability within the system, they detected areas where the virus had been intercepted by the measures we’ve put in place, and were able to actually resolve some of the risks that existed. That, for example, included closing off parts of the NHS to external e-mails: the right thing to do to make sure that our system was not compromised. But that professionalism is there to be vigilant constantly, because this is not an issue that will go away this week. We certainly can’t skip away and say, ‘There won’t be a problem next week, the week after or next year as well.’ There’s a challenge here about making capital investment decisions as well. It’s not always very popular investing in areas like this, but it is essential, it makes a real difference to patient care. So, we can thank our good fortune and the sense that we have made in being one step ahead by making investment choices in cyber security.