Hackers attempt to access Northampton General Hospital computers 240 times a day

NGH staff have been warned not to open suspicious emails

The hospital, along with the wider NHS, says it is continuing to see an increase in daily activity attempting to cause disruption and gain access to IT systems.

Deborah Needham, the acting chief executive, said in board papers that on average 240 attempts were blocked each day. With the NHS's aim to become paperless this would only increase, she said.

Mrs Needham said: "Staff are constantly reminded not to open strange emails or click on links that they did not know.

She added: "With an ever-growing estate of devices, applications and medical devices the IT team have a huge challenge to keep the trust’s patient and staff data."

Board papers list the main issues for the trust as being:

Opportunistic and targeted attacks: phishing email campaigns that attempt to fool trust staff into clicking a link that installs malware such as a virus.

Exploitation of unpatched software - ensuring the trust's software is kept up-to-date with security patches is a priority as this is one of the most likely ways that an attack will be successful against the hospital

Human resources cyber security.