A cyberattack against the healthcare system in Canada has disrupted services and forced the cancellation of some appointments.
- The cyberattack in Canada compromised the data systems and technicians used to exchange medical records such as X-rays and CT scans.
- The threat actors demand payment in untraceable cryptocurrency transactions.
- Many affected health centres started using paper-based systems for safety reasons.
- Vaccination clinics are unaffected by the outages.
A cyberattack against the healthcare system in Canada has disrupted services and forced the cancellation of some appointments.
The attack occurred on October 30th, causing regional health systems to shut down their networks and cancel thousands of medical appointments.
The outage impacted Eastern Health, Central Health, Western Health and the Labrador Grenfell Regional Health authorities.
The IT outage also affected communications in the region, with people reporting an inability to reach the health care centres or 911 via phone.
Many affected health centres have moved back to using pen and paper as emails are not working, and doctors cannot register new patients or upload and access medical results on the database.
Affected healthcare centres have also been forced to cancel or reschedule appointments for chemotherapy, surgeries, x-ray scans, and other specialist services.
Even though IT outages are not the same for all hospitals in the province, almost all deal with disruption.
The only thing that continues to operate is typically emergency care, vaccinations and the admission of cases that can't be rejected.
“This led to progressive failure of what's been described to me as the brain of the data centre and a loss of functionality and systems across the regional health authorities," health minister John Haggie said, adding that authorities have adopted contingency measures.
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