Cyberattack on top Indian hospital highlights security risk

December 8, 2022
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The leading hospital in India’s capital limped back to normalcy on Wednesday after a cyberattack crippled its operations for nearly two weeks.

Online registration of patients resumed Tuesday after the hospital was able to access its server and recover lost data. The hospital worked with federal authorities to restore the system and strengthen its defenses.

It’s unclear who conducted the Nov. 23 attack on the All India Institute of Medical Sciences or where it originated. Hospital authorities didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The attack was followed by a series of failed attempts to hack India’s top medical research organization, the Indian Council of Medical Research. This raised further concerns about the vulnerability of India’s health system to attacks at a time when the government is pushing hospitals to digitize their records.

More than 173,000 hospitals have registered with a federal program to digitize health records since its launch in September 2021. The program assigns patients numbers that are linked to medical information stored by hospitals on their own servers or in cloud-based storage. Experts fear that hospitals may not have the expertise to ensure digital security.