Threats to NHS included in National Risk Register

Deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden has published the National Risk Register, which outlines the risks facing the UK.

The register includes 89 threats that would have a significant impact on the UK’s safety, security or critical systems at a national level.

Threats listed include disruption to energy supplies following the invasion of Ukraine, malicious uses of drones to disrupt transport and other critical operations and threats to undersea transatlantic telecommunications cables used for internet and communications.

The risk register also includes a section on cyber attacks to the health and social care system, with the sector being a target for cyber criminals. The register states: "The reasonable worst-case scenario would involve significant systemic service disruption due to ransomware moving quickly across the health and care IT estate. Systems would become inaccessible and organisations would move to offline services. Data loss would be widespread across the affected estate, with data also compromised and/or stolen. Some data would be unrecoverable from backups."

In this case, additional staff would be needed to handle paper records and communications team to provide public and responders with clear information, and, possibly, third-party IT support depending on the type and severity of the incident.

The register also includes terrorist attacks and "accidents" like rail accident or large passenger vessel accident which would also have a significant impact on the NHS.

Also listed are major adult social care provider failure and insolvency of supplier(s) of critical services to the public sector.

There is a human, animal and plant health section, which includes pandemic and outbreak of an emerging infectious disease.

Image by VIN JD from Pixabay