Adult social care data and cyber security programme report 2019-20

The adult social care sector is adopting technology to support care delivery. Whilst advances in technology bring benefits for the sector, and for the people the sector supports, they also present risks in how information is managed and kept secure.

To implement the outcomes of the national cyber security strategy the Digital Social Care partners, LGA, NHS Digital and NHSX worked with IPC to raise awareness across councils and adult social care providers of the importance of data and cyber security – and of what they can do to adopt appropriate safeguards. IPC supported 24 local projects and the programme gave grants to 57 care providers, supporting many organisations to complete the Data Security and Protection Toolkit as well as producing a wealth of data and cyber security guidance, training materials and other products.

This report summarises learning from the programme, identifies the key risks that provider services face and the extent to which recommendations in the 2018/19 programme report have been implemented. Download the Full Report or the Executive Summary of this report.

Programme activity took place from July 2019 to the end of March 2020. Some activities at the end of the programme were curtailed due to the coronavirus crisis. The use of technology has changed rapidly since the lockdown. Not least that the Data Security and Protection Toolkit compliance requirements have been temporarily relaxed and a mass NHSmail onboarding process has begun. The importance of data and cyber security has only increased as many digitally inexperienced care providers rapidly take up technology and criminals are using coronavirus to launch scams and cyber-attacks.