From Crisis Response to Cyber Resilience: Healthcare's New Security Mandate

This month’s UK Spending Review marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of healthcare cyber security. With record-breaking investment aimed at strengthening NHS digital defences, including a new national incident-response hub and pilot programmes for AI-driven threat detection. The message is clear: cyber threats to healthcare are now being treated with the same urgency as any public health crisis. 

And it’s not just the UK taking action. Across the Atlantic, a wave of new US legislation is pushing to close cyber gaps in patient care, create real-time response capabilities, and elevate security standards across every tier of the healthcare system. 

The UK: Turning Strategy Into Systemic Change 

The UK's 2025 Spending Review delivers one of the most significant boosts to NHS cyber preparedness in years. Funding is being directed to three key areas: 

• A national NHS incident-response hub, offering centralised support and rapid mobilisation during attacks. 

• Tougher medical device security, to protect increasingly connected technologies from becoming backdoor entry points. 

• AI-powered threat detection pilots across multiple NHS trusts — moving from isolated experiments to system-wide application. 

This marks a shift from reactive firefighting to proactive resilience. In a threat landscape where ransomware actors constantly probe for weaknesses, these investments aim to keep clinical systems running and safeguard patient data under any circumstance. 

The US: Legislative Push for Real-Time Readiness 

Meanwhile, in the US, new healthcare cyber bills are working their way through Congress with similar bold aims: 

• A proposed “cyber buddy” system would formally link the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), ensuring that hospitals receive threat intelligence faster. 

• Regular security audits and baseline requirements would become standard, even for smaller practices. 

• A companion bill calls for real-time CISA feeds and incident response playbooks, along with quarterly workshops to help health systems turn data into decisions during a cyberattack. 

While questions around funding and patient privacy remain, the move signals a fundamental change in expectations: resilience must be built in, not bolted on. 

Cyber Security as a Core Pillar of Patient Safety 

What unites these developments on both sides of the Atlantic is a growing recognition that cyber security isn’t a back-office concern, it’s a critical part of patient safety. In today’s hospitals, staff can’t deliver care if systems are locked down by ransomware or if devices are compromised mid-operation. 

Real-world attacks have made this reality all too clear. The new wave of investment and legislation is a direct response to those risks, aiming to ensure healthcare systems are as ready to handle digital threats as they are medical emergencies. 

The Road Ahead: From Awareness to Action 

Whether you're a public health leader, a CIO, or a frontline practitioner, the message is clear: the era of cyber-resilient healthcare is no longer optional, it's operational. 

• Do you have real-time visibility into your systems? 

• Are your medical devices secure by design? 

• Can your team respond quickly, collaboratively, and confidently to a cyber incident? 

If the answer to any of these is "not yet" the question becomes: what’s your organisation’s next step toward resilience?