Don’t connect outside device to AIIMS network, admin tells staff

For the eighth consecutive day, patients and their attendants continued to struggle with the slow movement of appointments and tests.

New Delhi Patients and their attendants continued to struggle with the slow movement of appointments and tests at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Wednesday as the server at the hospital continued to be impacted for an eighth day.

The hospital also issued an internal video guide to help its doctors, faculty members and other staff to install the prescribed security software in their systems. (HT Archive)

AIIMS and its centres had fallen prey to a ransomware attack on November 23 after the hospital’s primary and the first backup servers were corrupted. On Tuesday, the hospital had said that it was able to restart its main eHospital digital utility, but services could take at least a couple of days to come back online. There is also no clarity on whether the critical database containing patient records and test reports can be retrieved.

The Delhi Police’s Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) cell have filed a first information report (FIR) invoking sections of cyber terrorism (IT Act, section 66F) against unknown persons, while teams from National Informatics Centre (NIC) and Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) are attempting to restore the network. Teams from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) were also roped in to probe the hacking.

Meanwhile, the AIIMS administration on Wednesday directed its staff to not connect any external routers, computer systems or laptops to the AIIMS network.

“In light of the recent cyberattack on the institute, it is requested that—no router/hub etc should be connected to the AIIMS network port by any user, no computer system (desktop) or laptop etc, which is on AIIMS LAN may be connected to a mobile hotspot,” an order issued by Dr Vivek Gupta, additional professor and assistant faculty, computer facility, AIIMS, read.

The hospital also issued an internal video guide to help its doctors, faculty members and other staff to install the prescribed security software in their systems.