England-based ‘Barts Health NHS Trust’ has become the latest victim of Cyber Attack. As per our sources, the trust which consists five hospitals located across East London has decided to pull down its systems offline till the issue is sorted out.
The victimized hospital list includes Mile End Hospital, Newham University Hospital, The Royal London Hospital, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and Whipps Cross University.
As per the official statement released by a spokesperson for Barts Health NHS Trust which serves millions a year through its 15,000 staff members, the IT attack took place early this week and the staff discovered it yesterday i.e on Thursday.
The officials are yet to find out the source of the attack which infiltrated the computer network of the healthcare trust.
But as per our reliable sources, the Trust is said to be still using Windows XP Operating systems across its network. And this has made the entire network vulnerable to malicious software attacks like Ransomware.
According to the details released to the media, the Cerner Millennium Patient Administration system and Clinical System used for Radiology are not affected in the attack. And so the authorities have decided to continue the IT operations for this healthcare segment.
A couple of months ago, a similar incident took place in Britain. Between October- November 2016, a cyber attack was launched by cyber criminals against Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust. The said attack made the staff of three hospitals take down their services offline for almost 5 days.
Later, it was found in the probe that the Goole NHS Trust cyber incident took place due to a Globe2 ransomware attack which made the NHS Trust authorities cancel the appointments of more than 2800 patients.
Lincolnshire Trust said that the cyber attack which took place on its IT systems was a result of Phishing emails, which contained links that released a malicious virus once activated.
In recent times, hackers are targeting hospitals on a major note as the data sourced from healthcare field has a lot of value to cybercriminals.
They can either sell that data on the web or lock that data from being accessed till a ransom is paid.
So, law enforcement agencies in UK, Europe, and the United States are asking public and private companies serving in the healthcare field to stay cautious against cyber threats in a proactive way.
Hope, all the healthcare firms are listening….!
