With ransomware attacks increasing in both speed and sophistication, there is a clear imperative for healthcare providers and NHS trusts to continue to invest in sound prevention and recovery strategies.

When a ransomware attack disables a hospital’s patient record, medical testing or other data systems, the disruption can be widespread. System downtime not only hinders clinical decision-making and creates the potential for medical errors, but it can also result in cancelled operations and closed departments.

With data from 2020 putting the average IT system recovery time at 19 days (up 54% on the previous year), this can have a very significant impact on the hospital’s ability to operate. Alongside the very real impacts on patient care, the financial costs of unlocking or decrypting data can be significant.

There is a simple, more comprehensive approach to data protection and recovery – put your data in safe mode. The key to effectively protecting hospital data is to bring all the disparate silos together in one place, then create a read-only snapshot of the data.