AIIMS was under a cyber attack on Wednesday
As a result, the premier institute has been suffering power outages all through Thursday
An investigation into the attack is currently underway
AIIMS, one of India’s top medical institutes, was under a cyberattack that left it experiencing power outages. Naturally, these outages have proved to be quite disastrous, with hundreds of patients, as well as operations processes like billing, diagnostics, admissions, discharges, and so on, being affected by the same.
A report on Tech Crunch satiated that the cyberattack occurred late Wednesday evening and came in the form of a ransomware attack, wherein many file extensions were changed. In an attempt to get things back on track, AIIMS relied on manual operations. While these certainly helped to an extent, they did represent a slow-down in processes that would otherwise take a few minutes, if not seconds. After a few hours, AIIMS confirmed the cyberattack to authorities. It faced power outages all through Thursday as well.
“We are not able to send many blood investigations, request imaging studies, and are not able to view previous reports or images. Many such operations are being done manually, which takes more time and is prone to errors,” a resident doctor, who preferred to remain anonymous, told TechCrunch.
What is the current situation at AIIMS?
The National Informatics Centre and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team are working together to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. An insider with direct access to information said that both teams are currently trying to restore data back-ups so that operations can become smoother.
The Central Bureau of Investigation and the Intelligence Fusion & Strategic Operations of Delhi Police are investing the cyber attack to trace the people behind it. The police department has also lodged a formal complaint.
As of now, it is not clear whether the attackers could access patient data.
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Kajoli Anand Puri
Kajoli is a tech-enthusiast with a soft-spot for smart kitchen and home appliances. She loves exploring gadgets and gizmos that are designed to make life simpler, but also secretly fears a world run by AI. Oh wait, we’re already there. View Full Profile
