FEATURE
The cyber threat A cyber attack can be catastrophic for a dental practice. This type of crime is growing and it’s important that dentists know how to protect themselves. Ransomware is a type of software used by cyber criminals to lock you out of your computers and servers. These criminals then demand a large amount of money to unlock your data. Many people do pay these ransoms, although there is no guarantee that you will get all or even some of your data back. Here we look at two cases of attacks on dental practices in Ireland and ask what dentists can do to protect themselves.
Case 1 One morning in 2013, Dr Patricia Shalloe from Cork came into her practice and found she couldn’t get onto her computers: “We contacted our IT consultants and they quickly figured out that we had been attacked with ransomware”. The attackers encrypted all her data, deleted her back-ups and asked for a ransom of ¤5,000, which she didn’t pay. Patricia did have an off-site back-up from six months before the attack. As a periodontist, she also kept all her pocket charting, which allowed her to continue to work on patients: “I had to wing it. We didn’t have an appointment book. We had nothing. We didn’t know who was coming in from one hour to the next or how to prepare so as you can imagine, it was extremely stressful”. 14
Journal of the Irish Dental Association | Feb/Mar 2021: Vol 67 (1)
Because Patricia had IT support and back-ups, she felt she was on top of the situation. Her IT consultant informed her that SMEs are attacked regularly: “If you look at your server, it is under constant attack from people trying to hack into it. If you don’t have something protecting you, you’re going to get ransomware. It’s not a question of if, it’s a Dr Patricia Shalloe. question of when”. Patricia had to report the incident to the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), Dental Protection, the Dental Council and the Gardaí. However, there is no way of knowing where in the world these attackers are based.
For about a week, we had people walking into the surgery. We didn’t know who they were, what they were here for. It was a nightmare. Even if your practice is not fully computerised, nearly all practices will have some kind of computer, even if it is just for accounts or email, and Patricia says: “If you have a computer, it doesn’t matter what you keep on it, if it’s anything to do with your work, you need to have a plan”. Ransomware attacks are not easily preventable because it takes money and time to get the appropriate IT in place, but it is worth doing. Patricia says the most important thing for dentists is to have a back-up plan, and have off-site
