Jerry Fahrni

Healthcare IT News: “ALBERTA, CANADA – Officials are saying that a virus is to blame for compromising thousands of patient medical records at Alberta Health Services. The virus impacted AHS’ network and Netcare, Alberta’s electronic health record, from May 15-29 before it was detected and removed, said officials. The virus is said to be a new variant of a Trojan horse program called Coreflood, which is designed to steal data from an infected computer and send it to a server controlled by a hacker. Coreflood captures passwords and data the user of the computer accesses. AHS has identified two groups who are potentially at risk – patients whose health information was accessed in Netcare through an infected computer, and employees who accessed personal banking and email accounts from work using an infected computer.” - I’d like to know a little more detail on how the virus was introduced into the system, the operating system being used, etc. Computer viruses are particularly problematic in healthcare where IT departments invest significant resources, both physical and financial, in stopping these malicious attacks.