We have already discussed in previous blogs – which you can find in our news section News | The Eastern Cyber Resilience Centre (ecrcentre.co.uk) – why the health sector is such an attractive target for scammers and cyber criminals. What we intend to show you here are few tips to get the ball rolling in your own organisation and start making it harder for hackers to steal, destroy or hold you to ransom over your data.

And remember small is not safe – many attacks are carried out by bots that randomly search for vulnerabilities in networks and then report back to their criminal masters when they find them. So if you haven’t patched the latest security updates you can put yourself and your organisation at real risk.

So if you work in any part of the healthcare sector - opticians, primary healthcare, dentist surgery, plastic surgeon or physio out patients clinic read on!

1. Ensure all your staff are using strong passwords. This means that they are unique – not used across multiple platforms – and not easily guessable.
2. Consider using a password manager for your staff to use. Remember just one strong password and your manager remembers the rest. Watch our short video to find out more.
3. Enable 2 Factor Authorisation (2FA) wherever possible, but specifically on any social media site, emails and anywhere you have payment details. This means that if your staff’s usernames or passwords are released, criminals still won’t be able to access the account. You can find more about 2FA here.
4. Have offline backups and test the recovery of them. Companies falling victim to ransomware still pay criminals even though they have backups because they have never tested them, and then when they need the data the most, they find that they can’t recover.
5. Ensure you have anti-malware on all devices, including your phones.
6. Train your staff to recognise common phishing attacks and how to report them. Phishing attacks are the most common form of cyber-attack, and your staff can be your weakest link or your strongest defence, but only if they know what to look out for a do. The ECRC can provide bespoke Staff Awareness Training through our affordable student services.
7. If you have a website, get a web app vulnerability assessment. This will look at whether your site is secure from the most common cyber-attacks against it.
8. Install those updates as soon as possible. Criminals also know about the vulnerability and will craft attacks specifically for known vulnerabilities.
9. Have an incident response plan and test that it will help when the worst happens. You can find free template plan to get you started here.
10. Join the Eastern Cyber Resilience Centre. It’s free, and you will be kept up to date with the latest threats to your business as well as guidance, support and direction to free tools and services, and access to our affordable student services which can help with vulnerability assessments and staff awareness training amongst other services. Sign up now.

Incident Reporting

All the police forces across the Eastern region have dedicated specialist cybercrime teams who are highly trained and experienced in investigating cybercrime and at putting the victim’s needs at the forefront of the investigation.

It is really important if you are a business, charity or other organisation which is currently suffering a live cyber-attack (in progress), that you call your local police at any time on 101 or report the attack to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 immediately.

Further guidance & support

The Eastern Cyber Resilience Centre is a not-for-profit membership organisation, run by policing, with the intention of increasing cyber resilience of SMEs within the East of England.

You can contact the Cyber Resilience Centre for guidance and support through our e-mail enquiries@ecrcentre.co.uk or use our online booking system to make an appointment with one of our team.

We also provide free guidance on our website and we would always encourage you to sign up for our free core membership. Core members receive regular updates which include the latest guidance, news, and security updates. Our core membership has been tailored for businesses and charities of all sizes who are based across the seven counties in the East of England.