RANSOMWARE was behind a cyber-attack on

a Scottish health board which led to the cancellation of some appointments and procedures.

NHS Lanarkshire said it was a new variant of Bitpaymer that infected its network on Friday.

The board said staff worked over the weekend to reinstate IT systems.

Work is ongoing to establish how the malware was able to infiltrate the network without being detected.

The cyber-attack started on Friday.

Operations were cancelled and the work of GPs was disrupted.

Ransomware is a particularly destructive form of malware that catastrophically struck the NHS earlier this year.

NHS Lanarkshire chief executive Calum Campbell said: “We quickly identified the source of the malware and investigations are ongoing as to how this was able to infiltrate our network.

“Our staff have worked hard to minimise the impact on patients and our contingency plans have ensured we have been able to continue to deliver services while the IT issues were resolved.

“A small number of systems were affected with the majority restored over the weekend and the remainder on Monday.”

“Unfortunately a small number of procedures

and appointments were cancelled as a result of the incident.

“I would like to apologise to anyone who has been affected by this disruption.

“We immediately started work to make new appointments for patients at the earliest possible dates.”