Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 23 June 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Update on the Cyberattack, Covid-19 Vaccination Roll-out and Covid-19 Restrictions in Maternity Hospitals: Health Service Executive

Mr. Paul Reid:

We can never be confident that we have seen the worst of it. The Senators may be familiar with the actions we have taken. Just a few days after the attack, we secured the strongest High Court order that can be achieved, which applies to any persons known or unknown who would share or provide information to a platform. Social media platforms are working well with us and have since the start. We became aware of one publication, which had set out some redacted data. We secured those data through the order and the co-operation of that publication. Those data included details of 520 patients and some corporate information related to procurement contracts. We have worked with the Data Protection Commissioner and have engaged in a process with all the patients concerned. We are not aware of any further publication or sharing of information but we can never be certain because of the nature of the ransomware attack that we were subject to.