© Provided by Washington Examiner Ireland's health service shut down its computer systems on Friday after facing a highly sophisticated cyberattack on its IT infrastructure.
The Irish Health Service Executive said there was a "significant ransomware attack" on its IT systems on Friday but did not give any further details on who conducted the attack or why.
"We have taken the precaution of shutting down all our IT systems in order to protect them from this attack and to allow us [to] fully assess the situation with our own security partners," the HSE said in a tweet Friday.
The attack comes hot on the heels of another major cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline in the United States, which significantly slowed gas delivery in Southeastern states this week.
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Ireland's coronavirus vaccination program has not been disrupted due to the attack yet, and scheduled appointments to get jabbed are expected to go ahead as planned, but the website for registering new appointments is no longer working, according to CNBC.
With the systems down, doctors are unable to refer patients for coronavirus tests online, which means people have to use walk-in testing centers instead.
"It's very sophisticated," Paul Reid, HSE's chief executive, told RTE Radio 1. "It is impacting all of our national and indeed local systems that would be involved in all of our core services."
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He added the attack was "what we would call a human-operated ransomware attack, where they would seek to get access to data."
Tags: News, Ireland, Cybersecurity, Cyber, Health Care
Original Author: Nihal Krishan
Original Location: Irish health service shuts down computer systems after sophisticated cyberattack