Computers hacked across Gippsland hospitals, but clinical services still running
THE information technology systems at a number of hospitals and health services in Gippsland and south-west Victoria have been impacted by a cyber security incident.
At this time, there is no suggestion that personal patient information has been accessed.
The hospitals impacted are those which are part of the Gippsland Health Alliance and of the South West Alliance of Rural Health including Leongatha Hospital and Yarram and District Health Service, among many others.
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.
A number of servers across the state have been impacted.
Investigations are still taking place on the full extent of the impact.
The Victorian Cyber Incident Response Service has been deployed and worked with impacted health services overnight to respond to the attack.
The cyber incident, which was uncovered yesterday (Monday) has blocked access to several systems by the infiltration of ransomware, including financial management.
Hospitals have isolated and disconnected a number of systems such as internet to quarantine the infection.
The priority is to fix all affected systems and prevent any further compromise.
This isolation has led to the shutdown of some patient record, booking and management systems, which may impact on patient contact and scheduling.
Where practical, hospitals are reverting to manual systems to maintain their services.
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.
WGHG, Chief Executive Officer, Dan Weeks, said the incident has impacted on shared IT systems between hospitals within the Gippsland Health Alliance (GHA).
“Fortunately, most of our local services are still functional including internal intranet communications, phone systems, public address system, access to printers and external website.”
“In situations like this, the hospital reverts to manual paper-based systems to maintain services.”
Media Inquiries for West Gippsland Healthcare Group ph 03 5623 0600
The Victorian Cyber Incident Response Service is available 24/7 all year round to provide an emergency response to cyber-attacks on government computer systems.
Since launching, the Victorian Government Cyber Incident Response Service in July 2018, we have responded to more than 600 cyber-attacks on Victorian Government organisations
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Posted by Tayla Kershaw on Oct 1 2019. Filed under Featured, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
