Officials at South Africa's National Health Laboratory Service have announced plans to restore the operations of some services disrupted by a recent ransomware attack claimed by the BlackSuit ransomware gang by the middle of the month as the country responds to ongoing Mpox, HIV, and tuberculosis epidemics, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
With WebView still experiencing outages, NHLS has provided urgent test results to health officials over the phone while working to limit test request volumes through a "critical tests" list given to health facilities across the country.
Such a breach, which the BlackSuit ransomware group claimed to have resulted in the theft of 1.2 TB of data, "has endangered the safety and well-being of millions of public health patients. We have come up with innovative ways of making TB and HIV viral load historical test results available to clinicians. More tests, prioritizing those on the critical test list, will be made available," said NHLS CEO Koleko Mlisana.
