NHS employees trigger Google cyber defence

According to a report by The Register, high numbers of NHS staff accessing Google’s search engine meant that it blocked access to users, mistakenly thinking it as experiencing a cyber attack.

According to an email sent from an NHS trust’s IT department, Google accidentally identified the high levels of traffic for a ‘botnet’.

The email warned: “Google is intermittently blocking access due to the amount of traffic from NHS Trusts Nationally (This is not being blocked by the IT Department). This is causing Google to think it is suffering from a cyber-attack.

"We are advising staff to use an alternative search engine i.e. Bing to bypass this problem.

"If you have 'Chrome' on your desktop the page will display correctly but if you 'should' get a CAPTCHA pop up, please follow the instructions to continue."

The block meant that staff were forced to partake in a quiz to verify that they were ‘not a robot’ in order to continue using the search engine.

In an interview with the Register, a spokesman for NHS Digital said: “We are aware of the current issue concerning NHS IP addresses which occasionally results
in users being directed to a simple verification form when accessing Google.

“This would appear to be due to the high number of people using our systems and trying to access Google at peak times. We are currently in discussion with Google as to how we can help them to resolve the issue.”