An investigation launched by the National Audit Office(NAO) of UK has confirmed that UK based National Health Service aka NHS has incurred a total of £700,000 loss due to WannaCry Ransomware Attack.
The officials at the NAO also announced that the attack was caused by the use of unpatched and unsupported Windows Operating systems which were susceptible to ransomware. And added that the outbreak of the malware could have been prevented by the NHS if it could have followed basic IT Security principles.
Going further into the details, on May 12, 2017, a hackers group called Lazarus from North Korea launched WannaCry Ransomware attack which infected computers in almost 80 hospitals connected to NHS Trust of England. The malware also infected more than 595 GP Practices hitting a total of 250,000 computers across 150 countries.
As the network was down, almost 5 of the emergency departments of NHS were not in a position to treat patients needed emergency care. So, they diverted the ambulances to other hospitals due to the digital shutdown for next couple of days after May 12th.
In order to fend the attack, the NHS Trust disabled its phone and whole of the computer network and declared the activity as a major internal incident of crisis.
The audit report which is now available to the media says that between May 12th and May 17th, NHS postponed 154 elective procedures and 768 outpatient procedures-of which over 50% were for retinal screening.
Coming to the financial loss, the equations spilled from the NAO audit report are as follows- As NHS diverted patients needing emergency care to other hospitals, the loss incurred during this period is estimated to be around 400,000 pounds. Canceling outpatient appointments and planned operations made the Trust incur a further loss of 300,000 pounds taking the total tally to £700,000.
