A cyberattack impacted operations at UK Wirral University Teaching Hospital

UK’s Wirral University Teaching Hospital suffered a cyberattack that caused delays in appointments and procedures.

Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (WUTH) is an NHS Foundation Trust. It provides healthcare for people of the Wirral Peninsula and the surrounding areas of North West England and North Wales. The trust is responsible for Arrowe Park Hospital, Clatterbridge Hospital, and Wirral Women and Children’s Hospital. It also provides some services at St Catherine’s Health Centre, Tranmere and Victoria Central Health Centre, Wallasey.[2]

The UK healthcare provider suffered a cyberattack that impacted its systems forcing the healthcare organization to postpone appointments and scheduled procedures. In response to the security breach, the company isolated some of its systems and took part of its IT infrastructure offline.

WUTH is still facing disruption following the cyberattack.

“We are working hard to rectify the issue after a major incident was declared at the Trust earlier this week following a targeted cyber security issue.” reads a statement published by Wirral University Teaching Hospital.

“After detecting suspicious activity, as a precaution, we isolated our systems to ensure that the problem did not spread. This resulted in some IT systems being offline. We have reverted to our business continuity processes and are using paper rather than digital in the areas affected. We are working closely with the national cyber security services and we are planning to return to normal services at the earliest opportunity.

“While services continue to be available, there has been disruption to planned services, for example, some scheduled appointments are affected. Unfortunately we have had to postpone some procedures which will be rescheduled.” added the organization.

Wirral University Teaching Hospital prioritizes emergency care amid delays caused by a cyberattack, urging the public to use Emergency services only for genuine emergencies.

The response to the incident suggests that the Wirral University Teaching Hospital was the victim of a ransomware attack.

However, at this time, no known ransomware gangs have claimed responsibility for the attack.

It’s unclear if threat actors have stolen data from the company.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Hospital)