India’s premiere health care institute —- All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi — reported a massive cyber attack on its server today (November 23). All patient care services from appointments to registration and admission to discharge, billing, and report generation, were badly hit since 7 am. The worst hit was the registration section. “With the server being down, the outpatient and inpatient digital hospital services, including smart lab, billing, report generation and appointment system, among others have been affected,” an AIIMS statement said.
What took the server down
AIIMS authorities confirmed that the server for National Informatics Centre’s eHospital being used at AIIMS has been down. A team from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) working at AIIMS has reported it to be a ransomware attack. A ransomware attack is where the hackers demand money to restore services. “The cyberattack is being investigated by appropriate law enforcement authorities,”
AIIMS added in the statement. Officials said that measures are being taken to restore the digital services and support has been sought from Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In). Earlier this year, CERT-in, a first of its kind report said that it has observed a 51% increase in ransomware incidents in the country in the first half of this year.
How are services operating
All services are currently running on manual mode at present, AIIMS authorities said. The OPD and sample collection were handled manually but the sample collection system for those who do not have a Unique Health Identification is said to have been affected. As each sample collected requires a barcode for tracking, with server going down very few samples have being collected.
Biggest cyberattacks of 2021
Air India, Haldiram’s, and Pune’s smart city project Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation faced major cyber attacks in India in the year 2021.
What took the server down
AIIMS authorities confirmed that the server for National Informatics Centre’s eHospital being used at AIIMS has been down. A team from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) working at AIIMS has reported it to be a ransomware attack. A ransomware attack is where the hackers demand money to restore services. “The cyberattack is being investigated by appropriate law enforcement authorities,”
AIIMS added in the statement. Officials said that measures are being taken to restore the digital services and support has been sought from Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In). Earlier this year, CERT-in, a first of its kind report said that it has observed a 51% increase in ransomware incidents in the country in the first half of this year.
How are services operating
All services are currently running on manual mode at present, AIIMS authorities said. The OPD and sample collection were handled manually but the sample collection system for those who do not have a Unique Health Identification is said to have been affected. As each sample collected requires a barcode for tracking, with server going down very few samples have being collected.
Biggest cyberattacks of 2021
Air India, Haldiram’s, and Pune’s smart city project Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation faced major cyber attacks in India in the year 2021.