We recommend reading this vulnerability disclosure policy fully before you report a vulnerability and always acting in compliance with it.

NHS National Services Scotland looks forward to working with the security community to find vulnerabilities in order to keep NHS Scotland’s services and customers safe.

NHS National Services Scotland manages vulnerability disclosure on behalf of NHS Scotland. NHS Scotland consists of 14 NHS boards across Scotland, 7 special non-geographic health boards and 1 public health body. Further details of NHS Scotland organisations are available at: https://www.scot.nhs.uk/organisations/

This vulnerability disclosure policy applies to any vulnerabilities you are considering reporting to NHS National Services Scotland on behalf of NHS Scotland (the “Organisation”).

We value those who take the time and effort to report security vulnerabilities according to this policy. However, we do not offer monetary rewards for vulnerability disclosures.

Scope

This disclosure policy applies only to vulnerabilities in NHS Scotland products and services under the following conditions:

‘in scope’ vulnerabilities must be original, previously unreported, and not already discovered by internal procedures.
Volumetric vulnerabilities are not in scope – meaning that simply overwhelming a service with a high volume of requests is not in scope.
Reports of non-exploitable vulnerabilities, or reports indicating that our services do not fully align with “best practice”, for example missing security headers, are not in scope.
TLS configuration weaknesses, for example “weak” cipher suite support or the presence of TLS1.0 support, are not in scope.

The policy applies to everyone, including for example NHS staff, third party suppliers and general users of NHS services.

Bug bounty

Unfortunately, due to the NHS Scotland’s funding structure, it is not possible for us to offer a paid bug bounty programme. We will, however, make efforts to show our appreciation to security researchers who take the time and effort to investigate and report security vulnerabilities to us according to this policy wherever we can.

Reporting

If you believe you have found a security vulnerability, please submit your report to us using the following link:

Report a Vulnerability

In your report, please include details of:

The app, website, IP, or page where the vulnerability can be observed.
A brief description of the type of vulnerability, for example, “XSS vulnerability”.
Steps to reproduce. These should be a benign, non-destructive, proof of concept. This helps to ensure that the report can be triaged quickly and accurately. It also reduces the likelihood of duplicate reports, or malicious exploitation of some vulnerabilities, such as sub-domain takeovers.

What to expect

After you have submitted your report, we will respond to your report within 5 working days and aim to triage your report within 10 working days. We will also aim to keep you informed of our progress.

Priority for remediation is assessed by looking at the impact, severity, and exploit complexity. Vulnerability reports might take some time to triage or address. You are welcome to enquire on the status but should avoid doing so more than once every 14 days. This allows our teams to focus on the remediation.

We will notify you when the reported vulnerability is remediated, and you may be invited to confirm that the solution covers the vulnerability adequately.

Once your vulnerability has been resolved, we welcome requests to disclose your report. We would like to unify guidance to affected users, so please do continue to coordinate public release with us.

Where a report qualifies, we will offer to include you on our thanks and acknowledgement page. We will ask you to confirm the details you want included before they are published.

Guidance

You must NOT:

Break any applicable law or regulations.
Access unnecessary, excessive, or significant amounts of data. For example, 2 or 3 records is enough to demonstrate most vulnerabilities, such as an enumeration or direct object reference vulnerability.
Modify data in the Organisation’s systems or services.
Use high-intensity invasive or destructive scanning tools to find vulnerabilities.
Violate the privacy of NHS users, staff, contractors, services, or systems. For example, by sharing, redistributing and/or not properly securing data retrieved from our systems or services.
Attempt or report any form of denial of service, e.g., overwhelming a service with a high volume of requests.
Disrupt the Organisation’s services or systems.
Submit reports detailing non-exploitable vulnerabilities, or reports indicating that the services do not fully align with “best practice”, for example missing security headers.
Submit reports detailing TLS configuration weaknesses, for example “weak” cipher suite support or the presence of TLS1.0 support.
Communicate any vulnerabilities or associated details other than by means described in the published security.txt.
Social engineer, ‘phish’ or physically attack the Organisation’s staff or infrastructure.
Disclose any vulnerabilities in NHS Scotland systems or services to 3rd parties or the public, prior to NHS National Services Scotland confirming that those vulnerabilities have been mitigated or rectified. However, this is not intended to stop you notifying a vulnerability to 3rd parties for whom the vulnerability is directly relevant. An example would be where the vulnerability being reported is in a 3rd party software library or framework. Details of the specific vulnerability as it applies to NHS Scotland must not be referenced in such reports.
Demand financial compensation in order to disclose any vulnerabilities.

You must:

Always comply with data protection rules and must not violate the privacy of the Organisation’s users, staff, contractors, services, or systems. You must not, for example, share, redistribute or fail to properly secure data retrieved from the systems or services.
Securely delete all data retrieved during your research as soon as it is no longer required or within 1 month of the vulnerability being resolved, whichever occurs first (or as otherwise required by data protection law).

Legalities

You are solely responsible for your own compliance with law. Complying with this policy is not intended to provide you with any protection if you breach the law, nor does this policy give you permission to act in any manner that is inconsistent with the law as it applies to you or the Organisation.

However, if legal action is initiated by a third party against you and you have complied with this policy, we can take steps to make it known that your actions were conducted in compliance with this policy.

NHS National Services Scotland affirms that it will not seek prosecution of any security researcher who reports any security vulnerability on an NHS service or system, where the researcher has acted in good faith and in accordance with this disclosure policy.

Thank you for helping keep the NHS and our service users safe!