In the UK last year, hospitals were crippled when computers were infected with ransomware, throwing the entire health system into crisis.



In New Zealand the Ministry of Health has been fighting off up to 1.7 million attacks a week - about three times fewer than the BOP DHB.



A cyber security expert, Tom Moore of Aura, says hackers tend to target smaller organisations because they're an easy target.



They target the weak links to find anything they can sell, he says.



"Either intellectual property or maybe health records or anything they can sell on the dark net."



The large number of attacks have prompted the DHB to implement phishing exercises to test staff on their cyber security awareness.



The DHB's IT team has been testing staff with fake emails to see if they click on dubious links that would let hackers in.



But staff are routinely failing. BOP DHB chief executive Helen Mason said in the staff newsletter that more than 100 staff failed - clicking on the link and inputting their personal details.



"Disappointingly I have to report that over 100 staff failed the last test, going into the link provided and inputting their details."



She said in a statement to Newshub they "take this threat very seriously and continuously look to ways of heightening cyber awareness and cyber safety amongst our 3300-plus staff".

