NHS Board Infected by Malware, Hospital Systems Taken Offline

The UK National Health Service (NHS) has once again been the victim of cybercriminals, as the systems operated by one board ended up infected with malware on Friday.

The Lanarkshire board revealed on Friday that computers operating the staff rostering and the phone systems at several hospitals, namely Hairmyres Hospital, Monklands Hospital, and Wishaw General Hospital in Scotland, suffered a new malware attack.

The board called for patients to visit the emergency departments only if absolutely necessary, promising to reschedule appointments once systems were clean and back up and running.

“Due to NHS Lanarkshire IT issues, the staff bank system and telephone are offline and currently unavailable. EOL is still available, therefore please check this for available shifts over next 72 hours as a priority. Any cancellations should contact the main hospital switchboard as per usual process,” a statement issued on Facebook on Friday revealed.

Malware infection, only emergency cases being treated

NHS Lanarkshire chief executive Calum Campbell also confirmed in a statement that a malware infection was at fault for the issues, revealing that some systems were indeed taken offline to be cleaned by the partner IT company.

"We have detected some incidences of malware. We took immediate action to prevent this spreading while we carried out further investigations. We are now putting in place a solution from our IT security provider. While the issue is being resolved our staff have been working hard to minimise the impact on patients and we apologise to anyone who has been affected,” he said.

On Sunday, Campbell also revealed that the cleaning process was still under way, though an estimate as to when all systems should be back up was not provided, other than the 72-hour target issued on Friday.

There are no reports of possible data that might have been compromised by the malware, but there’s a good chance no information was stolen. We’ll update the article if another statement regarding the current status of the cleaning process is provided.