NHS trust hit by cyber attack cancer operations

Operations were cancelled after hospitals and GP practices run by NHS Lanarkshire were hit by a cyber attack.

Scotland’s third-largest NHS trust told patients not to attend hospital unless it was ’essential’ during the cyber attack.

Operations and appointments were cancelled by NHS Lanarkshire and people were warned that they could be turned away.

It was the second time the trust had been affected by malware within months, having been one of the worst-affected during the WannaCry attack in May.

NHS Lanarkshire said it was a new variant of Bitpaymer that infected its network.

The board said staff worked over the August bank holiday weekend to reinstate IT systems.

Work is ongoing to establish how the malware was able to infiltrate the network without being detected.

Calum Campbell, the board’s chief executive, said: “We have detected some incidences of malware and took immediate action to prevent this spreading while we carried out further investigations.

"We are currently putting in place a solution from our IT security provider.

"While the issue is being resolved, our staff have been working hard to minimise the impact on patients and we apologise to anyone who has been affected.”