Insurance, Internet, Latvia, Legislation, Medicine, Technology

The e-health system is used for processing very sensitive personal data and, if those data were obtained by third parties, this might have extremely serious consequences for the data subjects, therefore the security arrangements used by the system manager must meet the highest security standards, the inspectorate said.

As reported, the information system of the Latvian National Health Service and the e-health system were hit by a cyber attack at 1.14 p.m. yesterday, but full functionality of the systems were restored by 3.46 p.m.

According to Aivars Lapins, the state secretary of the Health Ministry, the attack was premeditated and came from multiple sources in more than 20 countries or at least was engineered to look like this. It appeared that the information system had been hit from a number of countries, including the EU member states and also the countries outside the EU, such as Trinidad and Tobago. For now we can neither confirm nor deny that the attack had originated from Latvia, Lapins said.

The National Health Service information system received tens of thousands inquiries within a short period of time which is an abnormal number that the system was not designed to handle. It was a one-direction attack targeting the system's server with incoming information flows but did not affect the outgoing traffic which means that the people's data should be safe, the official said.

As soon as the attack happened, all access to the system from the outside was cut off, and all competent Latvian authorities set to work to reanimate the system. Investigation is underway and Lapins relies on the competent authorities to establish what exactly had happened. More detailed information about the attack will be released when the authorities have such information.

The use of the new e-health system became mandatory for all healthcare institutions in Latvia on January 1 this year but there have been numerous complaints about the new system being too slow and other malfunctions.