NHS Test and Trace has announced that an early-stage UK company will be in charge of managing its supply chain cybersecurity risks.

Risk Ledger, which was part of the fourth cohort of the government-backed London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement (LORCA) program to promote cyber scaleups, will allow NHS Test and Trace to utilize its ‘social network’ platform. The platform will enable organizations to connect and share risk data securely, quickly and easily. This move is particularly crucial for the UK’s test and trace service, which involves the continued sharing of sensitive data to help control the spread of COVID-19 as lockdown restrictions ease.

The Risk Ledger platform will provide NHS Test and Trace complete visibility of its supply chain, including data needed to identify, measure and mitigate any cyber threats that emerge.

The importance of securing supply chains has come into sharper focus due to recent high profile incidents, especially the SolarWinds attacks at the end of last year.

Creating the NHS Test and Trace system, which includes an official app, has brought about several privacy and data protection concerns. It is hoped the contract with Risk Ledger, which was a winner in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport’s ‘Most Innovative UK Cyber SME of the Year’ competition in May, will help assuage some of these fears.

Minister for Digital Infrastructure Matt Warman MP commented: “The government is working tirelessly to secure the nation online and grow the UK’s £8.9bn cybersecurity industry as we build back better from the pandemic. We’re helping SMEs develop innovative products and services, and it’s great to see Risk Ledger, one of the firms we’ve supported, win this contract to protect the Test and Trace system and support the national effort against coronavirus.”

Haydn Brooks, Risk Ledger CEO and co-founder, welcomed the move: “NHS Test and Trace is essentially the biggest new start-up in the UK healthcare market so we are delighted they have chosen to take advantage of our ability to provide enhanced visibility of their supply chain risks. I am proud we will be part of the effort to secure this incredibly important supply chain.

“Healthcare organizations and their supply chains handle lots of highly sensitive data and have a high rate of data breaches. We have already seen during the COVID-19 pandemic that bad actors are actively targeting supply chains to access data and cause disruption.”