News Tech and Science

Singapore public health services under cyberattack: agency

China vows to ramp up anti-hacking protections
Source: Pixabay

Public healthcare institutions in Singapore were under cyberattack on Friday but there was no evidence that data had been accessed, a government-owned agency said.

The so-called distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which make websites or network resources unavailable by flooding them with malicious traffic, began on Wednesday, national health IT agency Synapxe said in a statement.

Internet access at public healthcare institutions was disrupted for about seven hours that day before the affected services were restored, according to Synapxe.

The DDos attacks continued on Friday and there may be “occasional disruptions in internet services as a result”, it said, adding investigations were underway.

Synapxe said the measures it had put in place to protect Singapore’s healthcare IT systems “have enabled us to withstand the attacks with no compromise to healthcare data and internal networks”.

But it warned that cyberattacks were increasing and defences would have to “constantly evolve to keep up with advancements”.

About the author

AFP

Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency.







Daily Newsletter