The National Health Service (NHS) has revealed in a statement that millions of emailsare never received by the service every year. These are usually spam emails, emails from unknown and suspicious recipients and emails that have been blocked by antivirus .
NHS Digital recently said that over the past three years it has blocked the delivery of 11.4 million suspicious emails to NHS addresses. That’s a very large number. NHS Digital explained the reasons why these emails were blocked. Specifically, it said that more than 6 million were blocked because of the suspicious IP address or domain from which the emails were sent. Another 3.6 million were blocked by anti-spam programs and around 852,000 were blocked by software antivirus.
Andy Heather, a spokesman for security firm Centrify, said hackers and criminals see the NHS as a top target. The number of attacks is increasing, particularly those that exploit emails. Hackers are sending phishing emails with malicious links and trying to trick healthcare workers into accessing confidential data.
Experts have drawn attention to the service. The threats are many. One of the biggest is the WannaCry ransomware, which caused $92 million in damage in 2017. This ransomware and other variants of it continue to pose a threat. Despite all this, the health service has not paid much attention to cybersecurity.
A recent report by the Institute for Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London, found that the health faces many challenges. Some of these include outdated IT systems, underinvestment and a lack of security skills. All of these are putting hospitals and health services at risk. The biggest problem is the lack of adequate funding to address these important issues.
