National Health Service (NHS) system encounters mysterious failure, local health care facilities plunged into chaos

According to IBTimes, on January 25 news, England and Wales NHS (National Medical Service System) hospitals announced a major event on the 24th – two separate data center suffered a mysterious IT failure, resulting in doctors and NHS staff Patient records were inaccessible for some time and e-mail and intranet services were also affected due to outages. Currently, NHS has partnered with Microsoft to protect its IT infrastructure against cyber attacks.

NHS’s IT systems are located in Wales and cover important information such as booking systems, prescriptions and medical notes. It is reported that the two data centers are located in the United Kingdom Blaenavon and Cardiff Bay.

Because of this incident, NHS system management of this important information cannot be timely delivery, so seriously affect the daily operation of NHS hospital. In addition, according to the Manchester Evening News, Royal Manchester and Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital have also been affected.

NCSC, the UK national cybersecurity center, said the incident was not caused by a cyberattack, while NYS IT at Powys (Wales) said the incident could be related to a national firewall.

“Please only attend A&E for serious or life-threatening emergencies,” tweeted Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. A spokesperson added: “We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible and services are using their well-rehearsed business continuity plans.”

There is currently a technical issue affecting two Data Centres. This is under investigation by the NHS Wales Informatics Service and is being dealt with as a priority.

— Digital Health and Care Wales (@DHCWales) January 24, 2018

Although the British authorities expressed their own views, the specific circumstances need further investigation. The British National Health Service Wales Informatics Services (NWIS) said it has prioritized the attack.

Late on the 24th, NHS hospital data center has been re-launched, and all clinical systems are back to use. To prevent cyber attacks more effectively, NHS announced a partnership with Microsoft to protect its IT infrastructure.

Source: IBTimes