Cyber attack cost thousands
In just over 24 hours we had removed those ones that had been infected, rebuilt them and deployed those PCs back... Andy Laverick
A CYBER attack on the NHS which caused appointments to be cancelled cost Nuneaton’s hospital thousands of pounds.
The financial impact of the ransomware attack, which hit computer systems at the George Eliot, has been revealed.
As well as forcing appointments to be cancelled and causing chaos for staff, the attack cost the hospital nearly £28,000.
Of this, £13,500 was lost on cancelled outpatient attendances because the hospital had to postpone 150 appointments, the Nuneaton News reports.
There were 24 outpatient appointments scrapped on Friday, May 12, the day of the attack, and a further 126 cancelled the following day, Saturday, May 13.
It cost the hospital £13,950 in IT staff overtime as they worked around the clock to try and get systems back up and running.
There was also £200 spent on expenses.
The hospital’s finances would have also been hit by the decision to allow free car parking for around a week after the attack to try and ease the frustration of patients and visitors whose appointments may have been delayed by the attack.
IT staff had to painstakingly hand check 1,500 desktop computers as part of the huge operation to get the place of care back on line.
For around 48 hours after the attack, staff had to switch to using paper as the IT worked through its huge ‘desktop estate’ – 1,500 PC computers, to check if they had been affected.
Due to the virus, machines, such as CT scanners and X-Rays, were used but the images had to be looked at there and then – there was no taking images of the scans due to the fear of it spreading.
Andy Laverick, director of IT, spoke of the “highly emotional” weekend following the wake of the attack, to fellow members of the Nuneaton NHS Trust board.
Kath Kelly, the hospital’s chief executive, said she was mid-way through a presentation when “something happened.”
Mr Laverick explained: “It happened at roughly about 12.30pm, as were pretty much a lot of organisations globally.
“I went straight over to our control room in IT, where we had identified a specific area where we had been hit by the ransom attack and then within roughly an hour we had taken every PC down on our network as a precautionary measure.
“During the next 24-48 hours, our main concentration was on identifying which PCs had been affected; our desktop estate.
“Our server estate was already isolated away from the network, we were bringing them back one at a time.
“Our clinical systems were up and ready to go live by Saturday, and we were bringing services up, however we hadn’t fully recovered our desktop estate because we have got about 1,500 PCs on our desktop estate and because we had taken our network down as a precaution measure, we had to individually check 1,500 PCs.
“In just over a 24 hours, we had removed those ones that had been infected, rebuilt them and deployed those PCs back into clinical areas.
“In outpatients, for example, on Monday morning, ran as if the ransom attack had not happened.
“We had A&E up and running on Sunday then, slowly, we got other services back up on the Monday and, unfortunately, corporate areas were last but all of our clinical areas were back up on Sunday and Monday.”
He said the hospital’s IT department, like so many others across the country, do not look after machines such as CT scanners and MRI scanners, as they are complicated pieces of equipment that require specialist attention from the suppliers.
“We had a period of a week, working with GE, Siemens and Phillip etc, the suppliers, on ensuring that they could guarantee that their machines were safe and patched and ready to go on our networks,” he said.
Andy added: “It was, a very emotional weekend on a lot of levels, the staff were excellent, at every level of the organisation, they were fantastic.”
Now, systems at the hospital are being checked to ensure that the capabilities for the hospital to defend itself against another attack are as robust as possible.