NEWS
Life Healthcare becomes victim of cyberattack
The Life Healthcare Group has announced
that its Southern African operation has
been the victim of a targeted criminal attack
on its IT systems.
The company said it acted immediately
when it became aware of the incident and
took its systems offline, in order to actively
contain the attack.
Its hospitals and administrative offices
switched over to backup manual processing
systems and continued to function, albeit
with some administrative delays.
The security incident affected admissions
systems, business processing systems
and email servers. It said its patient care
continues as normal.
Pieter Van der Westhuizen, Acting Group
CEO, said: “Patient care remains our key
priority. We are deeply disappointed and
saddened that criminals would attack our
facilities during such a time, when we are all
working tirelessly and collectively to fight the
COVID-19 pandemic.
“However, we will not be distracted, and will
continue to place our patients first.”
Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky,
said: “The recently reported cyberattack
on a healthcare institution in South Africa
highlights yet again the harsh reality
that cybercriminals across the globe are
continually on the look-out for ways to
exploit the COVID-19 pandemic for
their own gain.
“Regrettably, during the past months we’ve
seen many cyberattacks on hospitals and
health institutions around the world, and
we consider them to be nothing less than
terrorist attacks.”
African integrator to provide free assistance
to UAE hospitals
Dimension Data, an African born
global systems integrator and managed
services provider, is offering Incident
Response Remediation assistance at no cost
to UAE hospitals combatting the pandemic
following a significant spike in COVID-19
themed cyberattacks on the healthcare
sector. Dimension Data’s service will enable
affected UAE hospitals to rapidly restore
operations after a successful cyberattack
and thus continue to deliver critical services
to patients.
Public and private hospitals as well as acute
care hospitals, urgent care clinics, community
health centres and other emergency care
settings, are all eligible to 40-hours of
incident response support, at no cost, on the
condition that they are directly providing
care to COVID-19 patients.
“The incredible rate at which the virus has
spread has overwhelmed the healthcare
sector. Dealing with the impact of the virus
is challenging enough without the added
complication of critical operations being
derailed by cyberattacks,” said Redouane
Gaouar, Director Go-to-Market Practices and
Strategic Partner Alliances at Dimension
Redouane Gaouar, Director Go-to-Market
Practices and Strategic Partner Alliances at
Dimension Data Middle East
Data Middle East. “By offering our incident
response service at no cost, our intension is
to get front line doctors and nurses as well
as all supporting functions trying to work in
a compromised hospital, back to saving lives
as quickly as possible.”
14 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com