The Assistant Secretary of State for Health said this Tuesday that many measures have been taken to prevent cyber attacks in hospitals, but warned that talking about this is a “high risk”, and could “open holes” in the system itself.Safety.
Antonio Lacerda Sales responded in this way to a question raised by the sole deputy of Livre, Roy Tavares, at a parliamentary hearing of the Ministerial Group on Health in the consideration of the State Budget Proposal for 2022, about the computer attack on April 26 to Garcia da Orta Hospital in Almada,
In response to Roy Tavares, who asked if this computer attack harms user data, the official said that talking about a cybersecurity issue “It’s a huge risk right away.”
“It somehow gives a stage to those we don’t want to regulate, and in and of itself, risks opening holes in the security system itself when we make it an overly technical discussion. It’s a bit like trying to set up a security system in our house and tell everyone about that security system.He justified this in the joint meeting of the Health, Budget and Finance Committees, which is being held for more than six hours in Parliament.
Antonio Lacerda offers, however, this Many measures were taken, “with proper humility and fortunately much has been done”by the Ministry of Health and the joint services of the Ministry of Health.
“In fact, everything that is innovation has a security component attached to it. In other words, when you invest in an information system, obviously we are improving security,” he commented, noting that the PRR has money for that issue.
The official stressed that when there is an assault on a health system, “The main goal will always be to restore the system as quickly as possibleThus, reducing the impact on the user, on the citizen, and specifically on consultations and surgeries at the level of hospitals, and at the level of health centers.”
Without specifying the security measures that have been taken over the past few years, especially since 2019, it is only mentioned that they are related to the new Virtual Private System (VPN) and the interaction measures that the Ministry of Health Shared Services (SPMS) has undertaken with other bodies: European countries that make It is possible to improve safety nets by installing, for example, a system of “firewalls”, which has also been a frequent practice.
According to the Secretary of State, the SPMS has established a Health Information Security Coordination Council, with representatives from various entities of the Ministry of Health, the National Health Service, which will also have “An important role for coordination between a group of entities responsible in this regard”.
It is a council made up of five components, namely hospitals, regional health departments, the SPMS, which it coordinates, and the central services of the Ministry of Health, in line with the update of Decree-Law 65 of 2021, which implies “a process of change on the security front that will end very soon.” “.
