Wellington-based healthcare business Patient Choice Ltd has reached a significant cybersecurity milestone by achieving Cyber Essentials Plus (CE+) certification.
The award is a UK Government-backed, industry-supported certification for cybersecurity.
Peter Roberts (pictured main page), director of finance and systems, said: “We are growing rapidly, and since we provide core services in prescription delivery for the NHS, it’s vital that our systems are secure.
“Patients, clinicians and healthcare bodies trust us on a daily basis to manage their data and maintain the quality of our prescription management services. This certification demonstrates that our policies and procedures are strong enough to protect against cyber threats.
“There are increasing security challenges in the healthcare sector, and cyberattacks can have severe consequences, potentially disrupting NHS operations and compromising sensitive patient and clinical information. We see certification as the starting point and will continue to evolve and improve our processes and procedures.”
Patient Choice is a dispensing appliance contractor (DAC) for the NHS, and dispenses prescriptions for a range of products in specialist areas of healthcare. An independent assessment has demonstrated there are robust cybersecurity principles and capabilities at the company’s sites in Somerset and Essex.
With advances in technology increasingly affecting their business, such as electronic prescriptions, they see CE+ as an essential requirement to demonstrate how seriously they take their commitment to ensuring that patients’ data is secure and protected.
CE+ helps companies protect themselves against a wide variety of the most common cyber-attacks and was introduced by the UK Government’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). The certification requires independent verification by an external auditor who conducts a series of technical assessments to ensure the company is protected against various attack scenarios.
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