Emergency services remained functional despite the systems’ failure. However, healthcare workers have reverted to using pen and paper for administrative tasks — tasks that, under normal circumstances, would have been performed by the systems’ IT networks. John Haggie, Minister of Health and Community Services of the province, believes that a cyberattack shut down the network. During a news conference on Monday, Haggie stated, “We know only what we know, which is that we have a possible cyberattack. It has taken out the brain of the data center.” Haggie stated that the main objective here “is to mitigate the effect and maintain some continuity of service for the people of this province who need treatment for which they cannot wait.” He added that the nature and extent of the attack are still under investigation, saying that the process is likely to take another day or two. “We won’t know until it’s over and done with what the real impact has been,” Haggie said.
Eastern Health Authority Believed to be Hit the Hardest
While each health authority in the province is believed to be affected, the Eastern Health Authority seems to have taken the hardest hit. The authority oversees St. Johns and the eastern region of the province. David Diamond, CEO of Eastern Health, said that “pretty much all” of their systems are not functional. “We can’t register people electronically. Our email systems are down. We are not able to access diagnostic imaging or lab results electronically and so we have gone into contingency mode,” Diamond added. The network shut down has hampered the way healthcare workers go about performing their functions. For example, although workers can take diagnostic scans (X-rays, CT scans, etc.), they cannot share the information due to the network outage. Furthermore, healthcare workers cannot access patient information as this data is stored on the network. On the bright side, Diamond stated that the incident has not affected the following functions and services:
Dialysis Community services Mental health and addiction services Work on vaccines and testing
Growing Cyberattacks in the Healthcare Sector
Brett Carlow, a threat analyst with Emsisoft, said that Canadian businesses faced over 4,200 cyberattacks last year. Furthermore, businesses paid out an estimated $659 million because of ransomware attacks. Callow said that many of the cyberattacks target small businesses. Therefore, they usually fly under the radar and do not feature much in the mainstream media. This trend can also be seen south of the Canadian border. In recent times, the U.S. authorities have issued several warnings for its healthcare sector about activities such as Ryuk ransomware and FIN12 hacker group. If you’re interested in knowing more about cyberattacks and what you should do to protect yourself, we recommend taking a look at our resource on malware to get you started.
