• South Africa’s public hospital laboratories of the NHLS are now 100 percent operational after a massive cyberattack knocked their digital systems down in June.
• This is according to Deputy Minister Joe Phaahla, who says that the NHLS is now looking to upgrade its cyber-defences.
• As always for government firms affected by ransomware, these efforts come a little too late.

Operations of the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS), which provides lab services for South Africa’s public hospitals, have been fully restored, Deputy Health Minister Dr. Joe Phaahla has said. The NHLS systems were knocked offline by a massive ransomware cyberattack in late June.

The NHLS operates over 230 laboratories across South Africa’s hospitals and provides screenings for diseases like tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and many, many other illnesses and ailments for 85 percent of South Africans.

The important laboratory network saw its digital systems knocked offline when a ransomware virus managed to get into the system and “was utilised to target selected points in the NHLS IT systems, rendering them inaccessible and blocking communication from the laboratory information system and other databases to and from users,” the NHLS said in a statement in July.

While live tests could still be performed, the taking down of the digital system resulted in enormous delays, especially in getting results back to patients, which now had to be done telephonically. Together with the existing backlog, delays continued well into August.

“Deputy Minister Phaahla thanks the NHLS on its swift and tireless efforts to restore its laboratories to full operating capacity following a successful and comprehensive rebuilding of its information technology systems and infrastructure because more than 70% of healthcare decisions are dependent on their services, thus restoring operations underscores its commitment to country’s public healthcare,” reads the statement from the Department of Health.

Phaahla has apparently now instructed the NHLS to take “decisive steps to fortify its information systems against future threats.” The laboratory service promises to invest in advanced cybersecurity technologies and implement new protocols designed to make the NHLS’ digital infrastructure more secure and resilient.

However, this is the same situation we often see when it comes to government facilities when they are submitted to cyberattacks. Similar to the 2021 Transnet ransomware cyberattack that cost South Africa several millions of Rands, improvements to the cybersecurity of these systems always happen after the attacks.

Local cybersecurity experts have long warned private and public firms that cyberattacks are not only a risk, they’re a certainty, and the best way to deal with them is to already have systems in place to defend against them

“It’s not a matter of if, it is a matter of when. Unfortunately, as soon as a government organisation are compromised in this fashion it’s assumed they didn’t have appropriate security controls,” co-founder and business development director at Nclose, Stephen Osler said in 2021, and the same applies to this day.

[Image – CC 0 Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay]