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LAST UPDATE | 15 May 2021
HSE CHIEF PAUL Reid has said that “safe and steady progress” has been made overnight in dealing with the fallout of a “sophisticated” ransomware attack that the Government called “possibly the most significant cyber attack on the Irish State”.
The HSE was made aware of the attack in the early hours of Friday, and shut down all national and local IT systems yesterday in order to protect them from encryption by attackers.
Because computers are shut down as a precautionary measure, some health services have been affected: the extent of the disruption varies from each hospital and service.
The Covid-19 vaccination programme has not been affected by the attack, and people should attend those appointments as normal. The HSE is still planning to administer between 260,000 and 280,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses next week.
Reid has encouraged the public to continue to register for a vaccine appointment through the online portal, saying that the system is safe to use. People aged between 50 and 69 are eligible to register, with information on those between 40 and 49 expected to be released next week.
Covid test results and contact-tracing services have been successfully restored after being disrupted yesterday.
Anyone who has symptoms of Covid-19 is asked to self-isolate and contact your GP, who may advise you to attend one of the walk-in Covid-19 test centres.
However, the Department of Health has said that “due to the current disruption of the HSE IT systems” daily Covid-19 figures are not available. Backdated figures will be published “when possible”, a spokesperson said.
Not paying a ransom
The HSE yesterday confirmed that a ransom has been sought but said it will not be paid, in line with State policy.
When asked today about whether the HSE would pay out a ransom to ensure patient data was not released by the attackers, Reid did not confirm but said that the HSE was working with cybersecurity experts to ensure patient data is not released.
However, Reid also said that due to how patient data is stored across multiple systems, there was currently no indication of how much patient data has been accessed by the attackers.
“We’re now assessing across each system, what level of data was encrypted [by attackers], what level of data may have been compromised,” Reid told Saturday with Katie Hannon.
“So that’s still a process that we’re going through before we move to the recovery phase.”
The systems were hit by a Conti ransomware attack, where attackers enter into a computer system and study how it works, before compromising anything they can and announcing their attack to the victim.
Reid said it was “quite a sophisticated” attack, a “major incident” for the health service, and is a “human-operated” cyber attack.
According to Reid, teams have made progress in identifying the nature of the attack and some of the potential impacts that the ransomware attack has caused.
The HSE’s backup systems are currently safe, with Reid saying that teams are assessing whether or not there has been any impact on the data stored within the backup systems.
Minister of State for Public Procurement and eGovernment Ossian Smyth told RTÉ News yesterday that the attack was not espionage, and that it was an international attack.
“This is a very significant attack, possibly the most significant cyber attack on the Irish State,” Smyth said.
He added that the motive is to encrypt private data, and threaten to publish the data if a ransom is not paid.
Update on appointments
Appointments were cancelled by a number of hospitals yesterday and thousands more could be cancelled next week.
In a statement released this afternoon, the Saolta Group of Hospitals said the cyber attack “continues to have a considerable impact on hospital services”.
The Saolta Group covers the following hospitals:
Maternity services and dialysis treatment will go ahead. Patients should also attend their chemotherapy appointments unless contacted and advised otherwise.
The following cancellations have been confirmed:
The statement noted: “Patients can expect significant delays in the Emergency Departments and Roscommon Injury Unit as existing IT systems are not in use and the manual workarounds in place are time-consuming.
“We ask patients to contact their GP or GP Out Of Hours Service in the first instance if their health problem is not urgent.
“Where possible patients should bring their existing patient number or board number with them when they come to the hospital. This number appears on appointment letters, test results, blood test results.
“We would like to thank our patients for their understanding at this difficult time.”
The UL Hospitals Group has also issued an update today, saying that a majority of outpatient appointments and elective procedures will go ahead as scheduled on Monday 17 May.
The UL Group covers:
The group is advising that patients attend for their appointments and procedures unless contacted directly by the hospital and advised otherwise.
“We apologise to patients who are experiencing delays and disruptions to our service,” said the group in a statement.
The emergency department at UHL will continue to operate but currently is very busy. They are currently urging all members of the public to consider all care options and only attend the ED in an emergency.
Non urgent patients may face significant delays, according to the UL Hospitals Group. Injury units are still in operation in Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s.
The Maternity Emergency Unit remains available 24/7 and the Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit remains appointment only.
The UL Hospitals Group also said that there may be further disruption next week.
The Dublin Midlands Hospital Group has released this update about cancelled appointments.
See statement below from @DMHospitalGroup regarding the current situation in our hospitals following the ransomware attack on the @HSELive IT systems. Updates will be posted as they become available. We thank our patients & the public for their understanding at this time. pic.twitter.com/02KZyDrSN6
— Dublin Midlands Hospital Group (@DMHospitalGroup) May 14, 2021
Patients have been advised to check the websites and Twitter accounts of the HSE and the hospital group in their area for the latest updates.
National Cyber Security Centre
Communications Minister Eamon Ryan and junior minister Ossian Smyth were both briefed by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) this morning, with the agency saying that their full resources are being put to supporting the HSE in its response to the attack.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications today said that the NCSC’s full resources “have been committed to supporting the HSE in its response to the cyber attack, and the NCSC is liaising with international partners and third-party contractors”.
“This work will continue throughout the weekend with the focus on supporting the HSE’s recovery process in order to minimise disruption to services.”
Speaking yesterday evening, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said it would take “some days” to assess the impact of the cyber attack.
He was also clear that no ransom would be paid, and said that it would be dealt with in a “methodical way”.
Security sources have said that the most likely suspects for the attack are criminals who are ‘state actors’.
“This is an almost daily occurrence, and the HSE were targeted this time. In terms of cyber security the most difficult thing is that these hackers are state backed and are most likely from North Korea, Russia or China,” a cyber security source said.
With reporting by Gráinne Ní Aodha and Tadgh McNally
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I booked with them for a family holiday last may and the service was great. I got an email last Friday with a sale notice and was going to book again, but there were no flights listed for next year. Thank god I didn’t.
Chances are they knew what was about to happen, and still allowed sale emails to go out to customers… surely that’s illegal!
Yeah got that too “up to 60% off” on Friday in my inbox.. I hope no one got stiffed with that one.
Only on Wednesday night last week were we looking for somewhere for October, decided we’d book a deal we saw for Portugal and we’d pay for it at the end of the month. So lucky but they would have taken payment for the holiday had we had it at the time, surely they must have known at that stage?
Why not just call visa and claim your money back?
I went onto aer lingus earlier, my flights are confirmed, called the hotel, my hotel booking is not. Called ulster bank (visa debit) and asked for a chargeback on the hotel reservation. filled out the form online, they said it should be fine and will get back to me
@iamahorse, where did you find the form online? I have been on to them via phone, twitter and called to my branch in person. Still no form. Getting antsy.
It is illegal for any company to continue to trade when they are knowingly insolvent. ..The Directors are liable under the Companies Act and can face criminal charges. It is a long drawn out process and I cannot think of anyone doing time for such an offence in this country
Why people don’t book flights and hotels themselves with all the websites out there il never know. Far too risky booking through travel agents.
Convenience
To be honest, for me, it worked out cheaper. This wasn’t a travel agent I went to, it was the website itself, so I did the research and it came back about 200 euro less than booking everything seperately myself. That was including transfers and all that extra stuff. Plus there was a rep on site and kids clubs etc. (not that we used them), So for a quick family vacation, this would be the way to go.
Nah, flight, hotel, taxi, job done. No worries, no bus tour of the south of Spain
Guru you’re slagging people for being lazy, see you wont even learn how to code!
Excuse me Mumpsimus, travel agents offer protection in incidences like this. My own company for example, doesn’t pay for accommodation until the client has travelled, thus protecting the customers money completely. I have liased directly with hotels and reprotected all my clients holidays and no one is out of pocket. So don’t blame “travel agents” for this. Low-cost Holidays is a huge company with many branches in accommodation only, flights, packages, they are at fault, not the general travel agencies, many of whom are also suffering the fall out from this.
If you book it yourself you won’t have the protections you would if you had booked through a travel agent.
That’s what travel insurance in for.
If you paid by credit card you can get your money back up to 60 days after the transaction. Charge back department. They might try fob you off but persist, they are obliged by law to refund for goods or services not received. They might try to get you you are not entitled to claim as the agency are bonded but register the claim and then you are covered for any outstanding amount no matter how long the claim takes to process.
Going away next month and had to pay hotel again but Royal Bank of Scotland said they will refund me. Let’s wait and see!
Just as well I booked with clickandgo !!
I heard they are next to go!
There are a lot of people out there who don’t mind paying a substantial extra sum of money to have someone else do the organising and worrying for them, and while some know the extra costs involved others are blissfully unaware of how much they could save by doing the trawling themselves but others are equally unaware of how much difference there is between one company and another. LCH were never at the races in the price war ! No intention of sharing my bag of tricks here as I am selfish beyond repentance, but there’s a lotta eejits out there too ! To each his/her own ! There were a lot of worried accommodation owners where I was last week because of the low value of sterling and the fact that it makes accommodation more expensive for people travelling on pounds or companies buying with a strong Sterling , but I assume the season’s requirements were bought forward ? Or maybe not. I would hate to tell you how much I paid as against how much I was quoted for a “package” … being the high season ya know… fair enough, if you have to go at a certain time, no flexibility, kids off school, and you must have THAT Gaff, well it is the seller’s market ! So sorry for those who get caught up in the mire of the back office finances of these big companies and I hope they are successful in getting a refund or an alternative holiday.
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