Romanian hospitals revert to paper after national cyber-attack
Tags Security · Infrastructure
A cyber-attack forced 100 Romanian hospitals to switch to pen and paper operations for four days as cybersecurity experts worked to contain the breach. The attack disrupted healthcare IT systems nationwide, forcing medical staff to rely on manual processes for patient records, prescriptions, and scheduling. Cyber-experts eventually defeated the hackers and systems were restored. The incident demonstrates the vulnerability of healthcare infrastructure to targeted cyber-attacks and the critical importance of offline contingency planning in hospital operations.
Technical significance
Healthcare remains the most targeted sector for ransomware and disruptive cyber-attacks due to the life-or-death impact of downtime. This incident underscores the need for robust offline backup procedures and air-gapped record systems in healthcare IT. For health tech vendors, building resilience and rapid recovery capabilities is now as important as functionality.