US hospitals turn away patients as ransomware strikes
By BBC News
Published: 2019-10-02 · Archived: 2026-04-05 17:21:42 UTC
This could affect efforts to contact patients and schedule appointments, the Government of Victoria said: "Where
practical, hospitals are reverting to manual systems to maintain their services."
Technology explained: what is ransomware?
In cases where patient histories, charts, images and other information has been made unavailable, it may be
necessary to reschedule some appointments, the authority added.
Daniel Andrews, Premier of Victoria, told local media it could take "weeks" before the problems were fixed.
The Victorian Government Cyber Incident Response Service has dealt with more than 600 cyber-attacks since July
2018.
"Unfortunately the groups breaking into individual computers at organisations are becoming rapidly better at
obtaining access across networks, and then causing chaos with a goal to being paid," said UK-based cyber-security expert Kevin Beaumont.
"This problem isn't going to go away," he added.
He said organisations needed to review their security procedures and ensure that backups were in place - and also
that such backups had been recently tested - so that data and systems could be restored in the event of a
ransomware infection.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49905226
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49905226
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