The NHS has issued an Amber Alert over a shortage of blood supplies following the recent cyber attack on Synnovis.

An Amber Alert is an part of the NHS’s business continuity plan for blood stocks that triggers hospitals to implement their emergency measures to minimise usage; move staff to laboratories to vet the use of all O type blood; and use patient blood management systems to minimise use of O type blood.

The June 2024 Synnovis cyber incident underscores the potential human impact of ransomware attacks, says Kevin Robertson, COO of Acumen Cyber, adding that the 'old arsenal' of cyber protection is simply not up to the job.

"The NHS has clearly been placed in a perilous position where blood supplies are low, appointments are being cancelled and the health of UK citizens is at risk," he said. "These types of alerts from the NHS are rare, the first ever Amber Alert for blood supplies was issued in October 2022, so this also highlights just how worrying the situation has become.

“In addition to the typical IT security controls, organisations today should also be implementing centralised logging, with alerting and correlation capabilities to detect threats across multiple attack vectors. Just patching your infrastructure and implementing MFA doesn't cut the mustard against today's threat actors.”

As at 25th July, national stocks of O Negative are 1.6 days and overall national stocks of blood across all types is 4.3 days.

NHSBT runs 235 mobile sessions a week in community venues which are regularly close to fully booked. Sessions in the 25 donor centres have a higher number of appointments available. To supply hospitals with the 1.5 million units of blood they need to treat patients, appointments need to be close to fully booked all year round.

On average, there are around 50,000 appointments to fill each week. There are over 12,000 appointments still to fill in donor centres over the next two weeks.

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