[SystemSafety] Safety and Cybersecurity. Again.

[Matthew Squair]

Re: the NHS

IIRC the NHS has been under an effective funding freeze (conservative initiated) since about 2010. Funding does increase but not matching inflation rates. Plus the usual outsourcing of noncore activities like IT, yay. 

Size of problem? As of 2014 there were about 1.08M desktops running XP in the NHS. That's big, a real big number. 

To renegotiate a major government support contract is a multi year effort and a very political exercise. Extending the XP support to cover the gap is doable, but the cost goes up (a lot), thanks MS. 

You want to upgrade to Win 10? Ok, we're talking big dollars for hardware upgrades ($100M+?) as a ballpark plus say one tech day  for swap and go do that's a million labour days and cost. But you can't parachute in a Mobile strike team, it's all decentralised, and tailored so it'll take time to figure out (for example) how to recert that MRI that's running XP for example. 

So I'm not surprised that this got put in the intractable basket by the trust. They're struggling if you hadn't noticed. I also think the snarky comments by the current (conservative) Minister are invidious to say the least.  

Cheers, 


Matthew Squair

MIEAust, CPEng
Mob: +61 488770655
Email; Mattsquair at gmail.com
Web: http://criticaluncertainties.com

> On 15 May 2017, at 9:17 pm, Derek M Jones <derek at knosof.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Mike,
> 
>> ... point out a worrying “lack of understanding of security issues” and that “the external cyberthreat is becoming a bigger consideration”.
> 
> They understand the cyber threat very well.
> 
> It happens every now and again, with lots of people affected
> it is possible to hide in the crowd.
> 
> It provides a opportunity to ask for more money.
> 
> Nobody gets sent to prison for being out of date.
> 
> Doing anything about it costs money and gets no credit.
> 
> -- 
> Derek M. Jones           Software analysis
> tel: +44 (0)1252 520667  blog:shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com
> _______________________________________________
> The System Safety Mailing List
> systemsafety at TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE
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