Deyalsingh: RHAs improving security against cyberattacks

HEALTH Minister Terrence Deyalsingh has said assessments have been done on all regional health authorities (RHAs) to ensure they can protect themselves against cyberattacks.

He made these comments in the House of Representatives on November 22.

After a cyberattack on the South West Regional Health Authority (SWRHA) last October, Deyalsingh said the National Security Ministry’s Cyber Security Incident Response Team (TT-CSIRT) investigated and provided a brief on the incident.

The matter was also reported to the police’s cyber and social unit. Deyalsingh said the police investigation into the attack is ongoing.

SWRHA, he continued, has taken a multi-layered approach to protect its information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure against future attacks.

Deyalsingh said this approach will better protect SWRHA’s ICT infrastructure from internal or external cyberattacks.

The ministry, he continued, is also taking steps to improve its cybersecurity. Deyalsingh said TT-CSIRT and the Digital Transformation Ministry are assisting in this exercise.

He told MPS that TT-CSIRT was engaged to assess whether the other RHAs had weaknesses or risk with respect to cyber attacks.

“Subsequently each of the four RHAs (Northwest, North Central, Eastern and Tobago) developed a security upgrade plan, based on the outcomes of the security gap assessment report and the recommendations provided within the report.”

Deyalsingh said the cybersecurity upgrade plans for each RHAs were submitted to the Digital Transformation Ministry for its review and comments.

He added that efforts to procure software to boost cybersecurity at the RHAs and other protocols are being implemented to support those efforts.

In response to a question from Caroni East MP Dr Rishad Seecheran, Deyalsingh was confident all reasonable steps had been taken to strengthen cybersecurity at the RHAs.

But he added that cyber threats are evolving and there was no guarantee that such threats would not happen in the future.