NHS Data Breach – Why Software Need Health Check-Ups

The NHS has revealed a coding error affecting 150,000 patients, sharing information they had chosen to keep private. Are your GDPR alarm bells ringing?

CAST is a pioneer in Software Intelligence and a Euronext listed company. It has previously educated businesses on the importance of software architecture scans. Like MRIs, these show the internal workings of a company’s software and highlight potential future problems.

The company raised the concern that visibility of software health and vulnerabilities should be available at board-level. Raising awareness around this issue regarding the TSB IT meltdown, the London Stock Exchange outage, previous NHS and airline glitches. CAST believes this is the symptom of software development’s lack of constant, automated health check-ups and diagnosis it needs.  Bill Curtis, SVP and Chief Scientist at CAST commented below.

Bill Curtis, SVP and Chief Scientist at CAST:

“Failure to properly register a patient’s Type 2 Opt-out is clearly a problem that should have been caught in testing prior to placing the System One application into operation. To gain complete software intelligence about a system’s trustworthiness, there are several types of testing that should be performed to detect flaws in the software’s functions, security, performance, and structural soundness. These data exposures frequently result when software development is rushed or the testing process is deficient. Software intelligence is crucial to the testing process as it pinpoints flaws and vulnerabilities and gives board-level executive a full diagnosis of the system’s health. Just like vaccines and health check-ups are necessary before going on your next backpacking holidays, Software Intelligence is a crucial check-up before your new software goes into application. Patients deserve the same level of professionalism in constructing the software that retains their data as they expect from their doctors.”