PHO reveals story of cyberattack

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Picture: Martin Hefford presenting at HiNZ Conference 2019

Hayley McLarin

It takes a long time to recover services after a cyberattack – but it takes even longer to recover trust, says the chief executive of primary healthcare organisation Tū Ora Compass Health.

Martin Hefford spoke to a packed session at Digital Health Week NZ in Hamilton on 21 November, three months after the agency was targeted in a cyberattack.

He told attendees the organisation was already scoping its digital vulnerability and investigating buying cyber insurance when the breach occurred in August.

Tū Ora immediately informed the Ministry and an investigation has since revealed evidence of four attacks by cyber criminals dating back to 2016.

“Cyberattacks had been on our radar for a number of years. We were on the journey, but we were too slow,” Hefford said.

Investigations following the August attack revealed that data may have been accessed on more than 900,000 people from the greater Wellington, Wairarapa and Manawatu regions and could include data going back to 2002.

“We knew we had to tell people. Potentially they had data on one million people dating back to 2002,” Hefford explained.

“We did not have a clear picture of what happened … what could they see, what could they access?

However, the PHO was surprised how little it affected their patients, as almost no patients talked to their GP about it.

There were seven requests for data held on them and most of the inquiries were from people in the IT sector.

A national website security scan has since revealed that three DHBs had the same vulnerability as exploited in the case of Tū Ora, but no PHOs.

“But that doesn’t mean there are not other vulnerabilities,” Hefford warned.

If you would like to provide feedback on this news story please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

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