We are inviting your organisation to take part in a new Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) pilot aimed at improving the way adult social care services work with suppliers to reduce the impact of cyber security incidents. This pilot is planned to take place in the South East region with approximately 20 Adult Social Care Services from October to December 2024.

The health and social care sector has recently experienced significant cyber security incidents which have disrupted the delivery of care to service users. To reduce the impact of these cyber security incidents, a framework is being developed to identify the sectors most critical suppliers and to understand their cyber security risks.

What’s involved?

• A virtual meeting with the Lead Contact in the organisation to identify participants in the organisation who will identify key suppliers and introduce the trial.
• A virtual 1 hour introductory webinar to help participants to understand the methodology to identify key suppliers and provide some questions to be considered before the workshop.
• A virtual workshop to record and score up to 50 most important suppliers of digital technology to understand how critical they are to your organisation. (In terms of likely timescales, for the largest organisations, this will be a workshop which is 2-3 hours maximum, for smaller organisations, it’s likely to be a 1-hour meeting.)

Why get involved?

By joining, your organisation can:

• Help improve support and services for adult social care providers, especially in the cyber security of your supply chain.
• Share your experience and knowledge of your supply chain with DHSC to help inform national policy.

If you are interested, please let us know by asap by contacting sarah@sussexdigitalteam.co.uk. We will then share more information on how to get started.

Thank you for considering this opportunity to strengthen adult social care services.