Jan Thornborough

Short answer, very, very vulnerable, unfortunately.

And it's not necessarily the fault of the health sector.

It is just the way cybercrime is increasing year by year.

With the introduction of artificial intelligence, all the geopolitical problems that we're seeing around the world, cybercrime is big business.

In fact, if it was a country, it would actually be the third richest country in the world.

Oh, absolutely.

There's really two types of attackers.

The main ones are state-sponsored, which are exactly what they sound like.

They're government-sponsored attackers.

And then you have the cyber criminals.

And usually, but not always, the cyber criminals that do the ransomware attacks, such as the one we saw with Manage My Health, and the ones that are trying to extort money

So, you know, they take your health records and then they might, they'll try and sell them on the dark web, but they also might use them to blackmail you or cause, you know, difficulties for you later on.

And even try and send fake emails saying that you've got an appointment or something and getting you to click on a link so they can steal your credentials.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, at the end of the day, what they want to do is they want to make you scared.

They want to put fear into you so that you'll do something urgently.

So if you see an email coming in saying, you know, you've got an urgent appointment for something, click here.

Or, you know, we're going to tell all your family and friends about your embarrassing health issue.

Those are the sorts of things that they know will make people respond and potentially get the money.

Well, NZ Blood is covered by the Privacy Code, so they should be adhering to the health information security framework and protecting the information accordingly.