Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) enhance cybersecurity and (b) protect personal data.

Being cyber secure and protecting personal data underpins everything we do in the Department. In accordance with the Government Cyber Security Strategy, we are working to ensure that our critical functions will be significantly hardened to cyber attack by 2025, with all Government organisations across the whole public sector being resilient to known vulnerabilities and attack methods no later than 2030.

To date we have launched the policy, ‘Data saves lives: Reshaping health and social care with data’, the cyber security strategy to 2030, ‘A cyber resilient health and adult social care system in England’, and the Department’s annual report pointing out its data and cyber commitments which cements the Department’s alignment to the latest Government and legislative standards for data protection and security. More information is available at the following links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-saves-lives-reshaping-health-and-social-care-with-data

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cyber-security-strategy-for-health-and-social-care-2023-to-2030/a-cyber-resilient-health-and-adult-social-care-system-in-england-cyber-security-strategy-to-2030

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dhsc-annual-report-and-accounts-2021-to-2022