#InLokSabha on July 21, 2023
Thiru Arasar & Jay Galla asked the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare about the number of AIIMS currently operational in India and the status of IT system upgrades at each AIIMS.
The MPs also inquired about the number of cyber attacks on AIIMS IT systems, the details of steps taken to counter this, and the measures taken by the government to strengthen cyber security infrastructure of AIIMS.
Dr Bharati P Pawar, MOS Health & Family Welfare answered that there are 18 AIIMS in operation & upgradation of their IT systems are taken up as per need & guidelines. However, the Minister did not give details of said guidelines or a timeline for periodic review of IT systems holding public health data.
She stated that 5 physical servers of AIIMS Delhi were affected by the cyber-attack in November, 2022. All the data for e-Hospital was retrieved from a backup server and restored on new servers. Functions of the app were restored after 2 weeks of the attack.
She further said that the govt. enhanced features like endpoint hardening, strong firewall policies, etc. on the recommendation of cyber security agencies, and a Security Command Centre has been established at AIIMS Delhi for strengthening data security.
The last few months have seen several data breaches including CoWIN, AIIMS, Zivame, and RentoMojo, but we’re yet to see a public draft of the updated National Cyber Security Strategy (NCSS) despite the call for public consultation being released in 2020.
Two weeks back, IFF wrote to the National Cyber Security Coordinator urging them to release a public draft of the updated NCSS.