Source: Irish Times - 2nd Feb 2023
State must focus on preventative measures to stop future cyberattacks having been badly caught in a ransomware attack on the HSE, Ireland needs to up its cybersecurity game.
The attack on the HSE was the worst known cyberattack on a health system in history
Ireland needs no reminder of what can happen when a link breaks. It’s been fewer than two years since hackers attacked the Health Service Executive with ransomware that disabled more than 80 per cent of the agency’s information technology infrastructure. Catastrophic consequences followed: doctors and nurses lost access to patient information, lab test data and other critical information had to be recorded via pen and paper, and all computer systems were switched off. Thousands of patients had their care disrupted during a global pandemic in the worst known cyberattack on a health system in history.
It took four months for the health system to recover and much longer than that to fully understand how it happened in the first place. A report released last year found there were known weaknesses and gaps in key cybersecurity controls. On top of that, the HSE did not have a centralised cybersecurity function that managed cybersecurity risk and controls, nor did it have a documented cyber incident response plan. The report concluded that nothing less than “transformational change” was required in the realms of cybersecurity to avert a similar disaster in the future.
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