After AIIMS scare, Safdarjung and RML begin bolstering cyber security

According to officials at Safdarjung Hospital, a security audit will be conducted soon, after the recommendation of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).  “We have been asked to conduct a security audit by CERT, and we will get it done soon. Our vulnerabilities will be identified, and steps to tackle them will be taken by the administration,” the official at Safdarjung Hospital added.

So far, the server at Safdarjung hospital is cloud-based and firewalls have been installed in the local servers.

Officials said that earlier, the super speciality block, oncology, dental and burns, and plastics were on local servers, but firewalls were installed in those servers as well.  “The local servers were only limited to respective departments. Now we have switched all the departments to cloud-based servers,” he added.

The hospital is also going to revamp its website. “We are taking inputs from NIC and have been discussing with their senior officials how we will revamp the website. We need to do a technical assessment for which we will hire experts from IIT,” the official said.

The Union Health Ministry has asked health officials at both hospitals that since they are dependent on NIC, all matters surrounding security should be checked.  “We don’t have a team like AIIMS which has a dedicated IT cell. Whenever there is any issue, we communicate with NIC,” said an official at Safdarjung Hospital.

At Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, authorities have been conducting regular cyber security workshops and a circular of do’s and don’ts have also been issued.

“We issue these advisories on a regular basis where we tell our staff on changing passwords often,” said an official from RML.

Officials said the whole system has been on the NIC cloud for a very long time, and no local servers are present in the hospital service. “We have a closed local area network (LAN) system which is run by the hospital. The NIC has been taking care of our e-hospital service. Our e-hospital is cloud-based and data is stored there so there is no scope of hacking,” the official added.

In addition to that, the hospital also has a 1,500-user LAN network and no WiFi is being used. “The LAN is more secure along with a central firewall and a centrally controlled anti-virus,” the official added.