Computer Network of Wilkes Hospital taken down due to Virus

The hospital officials of Wake Forest Baptist Health - Wilkes Medical Center at the North Wilkesboro town of North Carolina had intentionally taken down the computer network on Tuesday (i.e. on 18 September, 2018), when some of their individual computer workstations got impacted through a virus, as announced by Mike Waid, Winston-Salem-based Wake Forest Baptist Health's senior vice president of health system operations and integration.

As per Waid, the virus has been designed to target the Wilkes Medical Center's workstations with an intention to stop the operations. He further added that the attempt was not to acquire the patient data.

"Patient data is not stored locally so this information has not been compromised. This is one of the many advantages to being a part of a large health system. Wilkes Medical Center's affiliation with Wake Forest Baptist provided a quick response and shorter resolution to the situation," he said.

Waid further asserted that the larger system of Wake Forest Baptist Health has not been hacked, and therefore is not brought down.

The computer systems of the hospital have functions to monitor virus and provide protection against them. Wade said that the virus monitoring safeguards in the computer systems worked as designed, and thus identified the issues that began to occur on the workstations. Therefore, the hospital took prompt actions in taking down the computer network, so as to ensure immediate safety against the virus. "Our virus detection system identified this problem on the workstations, and we took measures to safeguard our network and systems," quoted Waid. Waid further said that they are following their standard practices, where they are being trained to operate efficiently during weather emergencies or any kind of business disruptions.

The hospital authorities have also brought in extra providers in order to ensure that no compromise is done to provide care to the patients. Waid has further asserted that the emergency department of the hospital along with the urgent care and clinics are operating in its normal pace.

Though the type of virus that attacked the hospital was not identified yet, but the Senior vice president have confirmed that the hospital will come back to its normal operations soon.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/25/2018