DailyPost 2813
RANSOMWARE HITS LONDON HOSPITALS
Gone are the days of proving technical superiority being the reason for hacks, or to bring to notice vulnerability to any organisation, when they were not ready to listen otherwise. Now the only reason is money, swindle as much as you can, from hacking, wherever you can. Ransomware took it to a different level and there are billion dollar gangs in this field. In this vitiated atmosphere too, it is very difficult to make out, why healthcare institutions are targeted? The first reported death following a ransomware attack was at a German hospital in October 2020.
WannaCry was first to attack healthcare in a big way. One third of all of England’s NHS Trusts were affected by WannaCry, along with 8% of surgeries. While there have been attacks on healthcare at quite a few places, proverbially, it seems to have taken a full circle here. The headline blares; hundreds of cancer patients are hit by NHS cyber attack as thousands of appointments are cancelled. The Independent reveals that NHS faced a major cyber attack. Among the impacted are patients with cancer and those needing emergency operations. Their treatment was canceled in the wake of the cyber attack.
At the Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Foundation Trust (GSTT) and King’s College University Hospital FT, more than 200 emergency and life saving operations, which should be done within 24 hours had to be cancelled. The paper reveals that the scale of disruption in NHS services in south London was after Synnovis, a supplier of pathology services to the hospitals was hit by a ransomware attack from Russian cyber-crime hackers. As in most of the cases, here too, it is not clear as to how long the disruption would last.
The hospitals would struggle if it were to last for more than a few days. You can gauge the seriousness of the issue by the fact that Synnovis carries out tens and thousands of tests a day but is unable to do so as it cannot access its systems. GSTT and King’s College have declared critical incidents. The impact may also extend beyond London as Synnovis supplies, some services to other hospitals. More than a third of procedures and operations have been cancelled. Even transplant operations were cancelled. Blood transfusions were impacted after the attack as there is always a need to check the availability of blood required for emergency operations. In all, lots of hospitals have been impacted, bringing large parts of critical healthcare to a grinding halt.
WE ARE STILL FAR OFF FROM THE READINESS NEEDED FOR PERVENTING OR MANAGING RANSOMWARE ATTACKS ON HEALTHCARE INSTITUTIONS.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.