It was distressing to hear that two ambulance trusts have been left without access to electronic patient records after a cyber attack which targeted a third-party technology company used by NHS Ambulance Trusts.

Around 12 million people are served by the South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) and South Western Ambulance Service (SWASFT) affected by the outage, which NHS officials are trying to fix.

Both trusts have been left without electronic patient records after the attack when access was lost on July 18, according to the Health Service Journal’s ambulance correspondent Alison Moore.

Ms Moore said patients were not directly affected, but ambulances were turning up to calls without detailed medical histories of those awaiting treatment such as allergies, significant health incidents and medications.

This incident reinforces the fact that organisations who have strong cyber security protocols in place are still vulnerable with regards to third-party systems.

Louis Arthur-Brown, Head of the Cloud and Managed Services Team (CaMS) at the Codestone Group commented, “At Codestone, we understand the critical importance of providing our customers with robust security systems and protocols to safeguard them against security threats, including cyber attacks. However, our commitment to security doesn’t stop there. We also work diligently to check our upstream suppliers share the same security practices, to help ensure that our entire supply chain is protected against any potential threats. Our comprehensive approach ensures that all parties involved are well-defended and can operate with confidence in a secure environment”.