Obsolete, outdated software puts Victorian hospitals and police at risk of cyber attacks
This article talks about the following: Cyber-Attacks have been threatening the hospital industry too. The recent case of Victoria’s critical services such as Police, Hospitals, and Child protection have been victims of these attacks and this has been attributed primarily to outdated computer systems. These outdated systems were never updated with security patches for a long time by the developers and this has led to huge losses in terms of data, financial, and patient records from hospitals.
It will be interesting to see how things unfold in the future. Is this a problem of negligence, lack of government control, or lack of financial resources? In either of the case, it has ultimately become a disaster and until this is taken care now, it would only aggravate over the next couple of years. How can the Victorian government ensure safety of critical care services? Will they be ready to make capital investments in these areas and at the earliest?
The article contains serious information on the situation. It states that the five government outfits were audited, which included the Department of Health and Human Services and Victoria Police, yet none of the were able to satisfy the auditors. Almost half of the systems were obsolete and 80% were close to or beyond their end of life. I can’t imagine that Victoria (in Australia) is not aware of the cyber attacks happening around the world, so a few reasons for this come to mind. Is it possible they do not have funding for this? Do they not have a cyber security plan, disaster recovery plan, etc. in place? Do they not have the cyber experts to help them? None of these would be valid reason, but they are excuses in my opinion. I believe at this stage, there is no excuse for poor security or not patching your system. If you need new hardware/software then get it. It is not worth the risk in my opinion.