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THE HSE SAYS it has found 5,000 cyber-attack attempts on one major Irish hospital between Friday and Saturday.
The executive says it is on course to re-connect services to the outside world following a four-day-long disconnection due to the WannaCry ransomware virus.
While the HSE said that medical services were minimally disrupted, it said that a number of computers had the potential to be held to ransom.
“Initial results indicate that one major hospital had over 5,000 cyber-attack attempts between Friday and Saturday. Over the weekend the HSE discovered a number of key sites that had the WannaCry toolkit on machines.
“However, the work done by the team prevented this toolkit converting into the ransom ware and causing the designed level of disruption.”
The organisation made the decision to cut external communications, including emails and server connections, on Friday.
“The HSE has already commenced the technical activity to re-connect the external access to the network including email services this morning.”
The decision was made after the NHS in the UK came under attack from the virus.
Staff members were unable to receive emails from internal and external sources, access the internet or external based servers.
The HSE’s internal email system was re-activated yesterday.
Yesterday afternoon, the HSE also confirmed that almost all the 1,200 servers that were rebooted to allow an anti-virus update to take effect were back online.
HSE chief information officer, Richard Corbridge, said that disruption to patients was minimal as the outages were expected.
“While the threat has abated for now, the team remains on a high state of alert for additional ‘attack attempts’ on the HSE network.”
The HSE says it is “now reviewing its response and processes thoroughly to better understand the threat posed since last Friday”.
“Any identified problems were not related to any security or infection issues”, a spokesperson for the HSE said.
“The have been no reports of any additional suspected cases of the ransomware attack.
The HSE is continuing to monitor the situation with the six national IT helpdesks continuing to deliver additional support to the wider healthcare system.
The cyber attack by the virus WannaCry has infected over 300,000 computers in 150 countries since Friday. The attack struck banks, hospitals and government agencies across the countries affected.
Ireland has remained mostly unaffected by the global attack. The only system in the country affected by the virus was the HSE-funded community care unit in Wexford which isn’t connected to the main HSE network.
With reporting from Paul Hosford
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It’s time to tax the super rich.
@James Joseph: it’s time to tax vulture funds and not raising welfare a fiver a week and cutting the Xmas bonus would save a billion a year! They don’t want to collect more from the lpt due to an imminent election. When the shit hits the fan again and the analysis starts , fg won’t have been found to be a prudent set of hands , believe me !
Enda lied. Leo made it worse & Harris hasn’t a clue. FG don’t care about ordinary citizens suffering this way – they only care about themselves & their wealthy influencers. Never wasting a vote on that rotten party again.
@Setrakian: unfortunately it won’t matter who you vote in . government departments are run by long term civil servants with no accountability. Harris is just a public face of the system.until we get accountability it just goes on and on
Great week for the government. Over 10000 on trolleys and 10000 homeless. Should give themselves a raise
@Shaun Gallagher: don’t give the parasites ideas.
@Shaun Gallagher: they just did in October. Another 900 a year.1%.
@Shaun Gallagher: homelessness is a worldwide problem, there is 16000 homeless in NI under SF watch
@Patrick O Connell: So Parrick you are happy with the amount of people who have no home to call their own? There should be no one homeless in this Country if we had a Government that would put Ireland first.
Gotten to the stage where I’d happily vote to bar all serving TD’s and ministers from holding private health insurance.
Let them experience having to use the public health service is the only way to get things sorted.
@Mill Lane: that’s an inspired idea! Won’t happen though the piggies at the trough wouldn’t allow it!
If there was ever a major rail or aviation crash the system would crash. God help us all. Senior management are not up to running the HSE and the Dept of Health are at war with each other wasting money.
@Martin Sinnott: If you had an accident and woke up in one of our hospitals, you would think that there had been some sort of natural disaster such is the scale of the issue. It’s complete carnage. People everywhere. Fair play to the nurses and staff that work in those conditions
@Martin Sinnott: get rid of the gormless failure Simon Harris, finish your studies Simon and let a competent adult take over…
@Gus Sheridan: But who? And could anyone honestly make a difference at this point? Just take the recent situation with the mortuary in Waterford, there’s a written history of that going back to at least 2004 when State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy had written about her concerns regarding it. In 2017 a body had to be taken to another hospital as there was no room in Waterford, it’s this history of poor conditions that drove Prof Rob Landers to write and complain about the mortuary in University Hospital Waterford. Yet the Taoiseach could find no evidence to support it. Did he look?
No dignity for patients, no peace of mind for relatives but at least people can google what’s wrong with them on their high speed broadband or take great comfort knowing that the tax payer is shelling out billions to build a children’s hospital for consultants to make their fortune in the private clinics.
The public & hospital staff know it’s ‘unacceptable overcrowding…’ but where is the URGENCY from Government to adequately tackle the emergency?Plus over 700,000 people on hospital waiting lists,this is unacceptable also….but where is the URGENCY to adequately tackle this?There seems to be a sence of tolerance from Government re ‘unacceptable’ hospital overcrowding,massive hospital waiting lists etc otherwise these ‘unacceptable’conditions wouldn’t be allowed continue year after year!
Don’t worry soon they will all have broadband to stem the boredom.
10,000 in the corridors and at least another 10,000 on the streets , ahhh sure it’s a great wee country , Fu(kin 1st world country on its way back to 3rd world
@Karllye kripton: on its way back?…….
Vote fine gael, fair play to everyone. I’m alright John.
You voted for them so what do you expect !!!!.
Almost 70 years of complacency and you still vote for them.
Before you whinge “who else is there” , how do you know unless you try.
FFFG were democratically elected and this is what you get.
Nothing will ever change until both parties are removed.
But realistically we all know they’ll be in power for a long time to come
Dont worry about it Simon and Leo have appropriated MINIMUM €12 million to fund abortion “services”. You voted for it. Now reap the consequences
Shocking. Wouldn’t happen in the private sector because management would be fired and not have public service protection
Ireland, A ship of fools or Banana Republic, take your pick.
I was one of those people..went into hospital in severe pain did not see a doctor fr 12HRS..LIKE A FIELD HOSPITAL..
I’d wager that out of those 10,000 people that were on trolly’s how many were actually serious enough to warrant the need of a bed and how many could have been dealt by out of hours doc.
I saw one night I had to present to ED as I thought I was having a heart attack. There was a mother her kid had a high temp the mother started getting shouty so a nurse came out and asked did you present to caredoc first the mother replied no and was told she’ll be dealt with in rotation. There was a man and woman with a child who vomiting. The point been if people used caredoc for the minor ailments then the figure wouldn’t be 10,000 another thing a fee of €50 should be threatened for cases deemed not warranting specialist care like turning up with a cold or cough or vomiting.
Is it patients or is it patient days. Neither is good but knowing this confirms absolutely as I recall this being an issue before.
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