A cyberattack on the Irish health care system could cost the government 100 million euros, according to the head of Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Paul Reid.
Speaking at a weekly Covid-19 briefing, Reed said that it could cost “tens of millions” of euros to repair damage from a cyberattack. 100 million is an early forecast and the amount is likely to grow.According to Reed, the HSE will continue to independently investigate the attack and intend to find out what caused it and what measures were taken to contain it.
As the head of the HSE noted, the cyberattack caused “unimaginable tension, pressure and extremely high risk” in the country’s health care system. He said that the incident “did not fit into any framework”, and those responsible for it “acted without an elementary level of morality.”
HSE Chief Operating Officer Ann O’Connor said patients experience delays in medical care “all over the place,” although IT systems are slowly being rebuilt.
The patient management system has been fully rebuilt at nine sites, and NIMIS is now operational at 24 out of 64 sites.
According to her, endoscopy works in five centres, 28 laboratories are working online, and 16 are offline. Of the 80,000 facilities in the healthcare service, 14,000 work stably and without interruptions. Ms O’Connor said that emergency departments were reopened and busy again, some of them the busiest for more than two years, while cancer services were back to work at 80-100 percent back.
Let me remind you that I wrote that Conti ransomware attacks Ireland’s Health Service Executive, after which Hackers threaten to sell Irish Health Service Executive files.
