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Barts begins IT recovery following cyber scare

16/01/17

Hospital trust says patients not affected by recent systems shutdown - now attributed to Trojan malware

Barts Health NHS Trust has begun to restore the IT systems it closed down at the end of last week following the discovery of evidence of a cyber attack.

A spokesperson told UKAuthority that several systems including pathology are now up and running again, and that patients have not been affected by the shutdown. When the problem was publicly confirmed the trust said its patient administration software and radiology system were still live.

Some systems remain closed; the spokesperson said these were those containing corporate files.

Initial reports of the closedown said that it resulted from a ransomware attack, but Barts said last week this had not been the case.

Update: Barts later attributed the shutdown to a virus - never seen before - from Trojan malware, and said its steps to contain the outbreak were successful.

"The virus has been quarantined, and all major clinical systems are now up and running," said in a press statement.  "No patient data was affected, there was no unauthorised access to medical records, and our anti-virus protection has now been updated to prevent any recurrence."

It added: "No patient data was affected, there was no unauthorised access to medical records, and our anti-virus protection has now been updated to prevent any recurrence."

Image: Barts Hospital by pandrcuttsCC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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