Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital suffers cyber attack even as AIIMS server remains down for 11th day

Even as All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi (AIIMS) servers continue to be down for the 11th day today, another top hospital in the national capital - Safdarjung Hospital - claimed it suffered a cyber attack. However, the damage was not as severe as it had been for AIIMS.

"There was a cyberattack. Our server was also down in November for a single day, but data was secured. It was handled by IT, National informatics Centre (NIC) which revived the systems," said Medical Superintendent Safdarjung Hospital Dr BL Sherwal, the Times of India reported.

TOI also reported the officials as saying that unlike AIIMS cyberattack on Safdarjung Hospital was not ransomware attack and that the hospital's IP was blocked.

According to the officials, the hospital runs OPD services manually, and thus not much impact was registered because of the cyber attack.

Meanwhile, AIIMS servers continue to be down after a reported ransomware attack on the hospital on November 23. Internet services at the AIIMS continued to be blocked as per the recommendations of the investigating agencies.

Patient care services including outpatient, laboratory, inpatient and emergency, etc. are operating in manual mode. According to cyber security intelligence firm CloudSEK, the number of cyber attacks on the Indian healthcare industry was the second-highest globally, with 7.7 percent of total incidence on the segment being witnessed in the country in 2021.