PIO doc warned of NHS` network vulnerability |
Patients of the state-funded country-wide service are facing days of chaos as appointments and surgeries were cancelled after nearly 45 NHS organisations from London to Scotland were hit in the “ransomware” attack on May 12, 2017. An Indian-origin doctor based in London had warned against the cyber-hack of the UK`s state-run National Health Service (NHS) just days before it crippled the country`s network. Dr Krishna Chinthapalli, a neurology registrar at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, had warned that an increasing number of hospitals could be shut down by ransomware attacks in an article on the vulnerability of the NHS network in the `British Medical Journal` on May 10 , two days before the major cyber-hack. He had highlighted an incident at Papworth Hospital near Cambridge where a nurse clicked on a malicious link and malware infected her computer and started to encrypt sensitive files. Fortunately, the hospital`s daily data backup had just been completed. The IT director admitted that they were very lucky. The revelation came as experts said they are working round-the-clock to restore the IT systems of NHS after they were hit by a large-scale cyber-hack by an international criminal gang that wreaked havoc around the world including India.
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