Virus Infiltration in New Zealand Ambulance Centers

Yet in another cyber crime, a computer virus took a toll on New Zealand-based ambulance communications centers and infected three computers during the second week of November 2011, infecting their paging and radio systems, reported the Dominion Post on November 11, 2011.

However, Operations Manager Alan Goudge at Ambulance Communications' Center was not exasperated as these computers had reliable backup and were functioning till November 11, 2011 in spite of being attacked on November 9, 2011, as reported in Waikata Times on November 12, 2011.

According to Goudge, this invasion on November 9, 2011 meant that the centers, Wellington, Auckland, and Christchurch in New Zealand were to manage the workload manually once the backup systems took over.

He further commented that there was no news of any inconvenience on the part of patients due to the virus attack, though the ambulance communications centers along with the ambulance service providers were investigating about the incidents related responses to verify if there were any delays.

Goudge also concluded that the clues to the incident were yet to be investigated. Researchers are yet to find out the whereabouts of this invasion.

He also consoled that any responses concerned with the incidents will be followed up with involved patients.

A Hamilton IT expert gushed with outrage this event in an emergency call center and showed his concern with regard to the necessity of a robust system for protecting the computer security system.

Commenting on the outburst, Goudge included that though computer systems were protected against virus infection, other services, like the paging and radio systems were infected.

Any incidence of emergency response times being affected were claimed by St John, though according to Goudge, the organization was investigating the affect of the disruption held due to the service.

A memory stick was held responsible for the initiation of the Conficker virus to Waikato District Health Board computers in December 2009. The virus infected the system from further functioning for two days and affected more than 6000 staffs and thousands of patients whose procedures were delayed while fixing the problem.

Related article: Virus Infects Through USB Drives

» SPAMfighter News - 11/19/2011