April 24th 2026
Sunshine, cyber security, and a lot of strong opinions. This week’s episode of our podcast CTRL+Care had a bit of everything, with Michelle Corrigan and Katie Thorn covering cyber, AI and digital inclusion in their usual honest and slightly chaotic style.
Here’s a quick taster of the discussion – but please do watch and subscribe on YouTube or Spotify.
Cyber resilience and social care
It opened, unsurprisingly, with cyber. Michelle described it as a “cyber-heavy week… which makes me a bit giddy because you know that I love it.”
At the centre of the discussion was a recent blog from the National Cyber Security Centre on collaboration and innovation. Not exactly a new idea for social care, but still one that needs repeating. As Michelle put it, “cyber resilience has always been a bit of a team sport.”
There was also a clear steer away from seeing standards as the end goal. “The compliance isn’t the point,” Michelle said. “Implementing it is what makes you more actively resilient.”
She also highlighted something that will feel familiar across the sector: risks do not stay neatly within organisational boundaries. “The vulnerabilities that impact us… are not siloed. They don’t obey the confines of organisations.”
Katie built on this, reflecting on how important collaboration really is in practice. “What I’ve learned over the last 10 years is that collaboration and information sharing is so vital,” she said. This is particularly relevant in social care, where people working in IT or cyber roles can often feel isolated and lack peer support.
Health and digital literacy
The conversation then shifted to digital inclusion, with Katie sharing findings from the latest Patient Information Forum survey on health and digital literacy. Her summary was simple: “not great news.”
There is still a significant gap between the information people are given and what they can realistically understand. “There is a gap between the information people are being provided… and people’s ability to really understand what’s happening,” she explained.
Michelle added that this is not a new issue, reflecting on earlier work in this space. “We are still very much on that trajectory and yet we’re actually worse off than we were before.”
AI and Mythos
AI quickly brought things back to cyber risk. A new model from Anthropic, called Mythos, has raised concerns because of its ability to identify and potentially exploit vulnerabilities in major IT systems.
Michelle summed up the challenge: “If something can identify weaknesses at the speed this is thought to… how do you contain that?”
Katie described it as part of an emerging “arms race”, where the same tools that could strengthen cyber security could also be used by attackers.
AI lab
Cera Care has announced a new AI lab, backed by significant investment, to explore solutions to workforce and capacity challenges. With access to large-scale care data, the potential is significant. Katie described it as “phenomenal” in terms of what it could unlock for the sector.
Cyber squirrel: Rockstar Games
And finally, a classic CTRL+Care “cyber squirrels” moment. A recent hack of Rockstar Games had an unexpected outcome. While the attack itself was limited, some internal financial information was leaked, revealing just how successful the company’s online gaming business is.
When markets opened, that insight into their strong financial performance actually pushed up the value of their parent company. As Katie put it, it may be “one of the first incidents where a cyber attack… resulted in the company… making more money.”
Not a recommended approach, but definitely a memorable ending to the episode.
Across all the topics, one theme kept coming up: whether it is cyber security, digital inclusion or AI, progress depends on people sharing knowledge and working together.