The Victorian government is investigating the scale of a ransomware attack on some of the state’s major regional hospitals that has forced healthcare providers to go offline.
Hospitals in the Gippsland Health Alliance, in the state’s east, and South West Alliance of Rural Health were impacted by the attack.
“The cyber incident, which was uncovered on Monday, has blocked access to several systems by the infiltration of ransomware, including financial management,” a Department of Premier and Cabinet spokesperson said in a statement.
The department said there was no suggestion that personal patient information had been accessed.
“The Victorian government takes all cyber risks seriously and is working with the impacted health services, Victoria Police and the Australian Cyber Security Centre to manage the incident,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said a “number of servers” across Victoria were impacted but investigations were still underway to determine the full extent of the attack.
“Hospitals have isolated and disconnected a number of systems such as internet to quarantine the infection,” the spokesperson said.
The department said the isolation had led to the shutdown of “some patient record, booking and management systems”.
“The affected hospitals are now working on their bookings and scheduling to minimise impact on patients, but may need to reschedule some services where they don’t have computer access to patient histories, charts, images and other information.”
Cybersecurity experts have previously warned healthcare data is a growing target for hackers.
In 2017, the ‘WannaCry’ ransomware attack caused chaos around the world — including for the UK’s National Health System.
In February, it was revealed a ransomware attack had targeted a Melbourne cardiology practice.
The state’s Auditor-General warned in a report released in May that Victorian patient health data was “highly vulnerable” to attack.
The report said auditors used “basic hacking tools” to access sensitive patient data at three major Victorian hospitals, including Barwon Health servers, to show the “significant and present risk” to data security.
More to come.
-ABC
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