Ransomware patch causes software error at 5 Australian hospitals

The massive WannaCry global cyberattack affected three Australian businesses, but they were not related to government or critical infrastructure and Australia and New Zealand both escaped major overall impact.

After patches against the global WannaCry attack were implemented, five hospitals in Queensland, Australia, were affected by an IT glitch that kept users from logging into the systems. The error caused failure of the hospital”s integrated electronic medical records system.

“Over the course of that weekend as part of protecting our systems from cyber-attack, a series of security patches provided by software owners such as Microsoft, Cerner and Citrix were loaded to further protect Queensland Health systems from attack,” said Health Minister Cameron Dick.

Dick assured patients their data is safe and Queensland Health experienced no security breaches, in spite of earlier allegations that the software failure had caused “a “catastrophic” loss of patient data” following ransomware infection.

“While this is causing inconvenience to staff, I”m advised that there have been no patient safety issues and our hospitals are operating as usual,” he said. “While a large number of users remain on the system, full downtime procedures, for which staff have been trained and are ready, including reverting to paper systems as necessary, are operating as required.”

“Ransomware costs the Australian economy $1 billion a year conservatively,” Assistant Minister for cyber-security Dan Tehan said for ABC News.