Computer virus shuts down Ambulance dispatch service
The Ambulance Service of NSW computer dispatch system became infected by a virus at about 1pm (AEDT) on Saturday, forcing staff to shut it down and revert to co-ordinating the state's paramedics and ambulances via a manual paper-based system.
The cause and source of the virus were unknown and the system was still offline at 1pm (AEDT) on Sunday and it was not known when it would be back up and running, Willis said.
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HUH? Could they possibly be running a windows Operating System, without full back up and recovery, for an ambulance dispatch system?
Cheers Don...
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Don McKenzie
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"I'd buy that for a Dollar!".
In any case, critical systems shouldn't be connected to the internet, and there should be an absolute ban (sacking on first offence) on loading unauthorised software.
There were problems when the system was initially installed a couple of decades ago. I think there was even a 4-Corners program about how poor the system was.
There was a recent tender for upgrades as well, and this sheds some light into the operational system architecture.
From
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The core operational systems and services used by the service for call taking and dispatching are VisiCAD version 1.10 for the primary ambulance dispatch system to identify incident locations, and real-time visual tracking of vehicles; a Genesys and Alcatel computer telephony integration; CDAT to receive the matching Telstra Eclipse Data associated with 000 emergency calls received through the Telstra network; the Inter-CAD Electronic Messaging System (ICEMS) to allow agency CAD systems to send and receive CAD jobs; an in-house, Web-based electronic booking system to schedule non-urgent patient transport; a the mobile data interface by which data is sent and received between the operations centre CAD system and ambulance mobile data terminals via several data radio networks.
The ICEMS protocol has been developed and tested by the NSW Fire Brigades and Ambulance Service and will be deployed between those and NSW Police with the next twelve months.
Other systems that integrate into the CAD system include: paging and SMS, priority dispatch software, a custom Windows DLL for clinical decision support, a call taking quality assurance application and the Higher Ground voice recording application.
The service operates a centralized data warehouse which is continuously updated with all VisiCAD and related data from each of the operations centres for backup, DR and reporting purposes. Live operational data is replicated in real time to a central data store at Rozelle in Sydney. Replication covers all CAD SQL data and most of the other data sources.
In addition to the CAD data warehouse, the tender requests Genesys data marts from each centre to be deposited into a central data mart.
The DR equipment is expected to be a mirror of the primary CAD data centre, including three fully-populated blade enclosures; however, if blades are not used then the equivalent would be about 50 HP rack-mounted servers. There are also six stratus fault tolerant servers. For storage an EMC SAN with between 30 to 40 disks is used.
A full reinstall and restore from a backup made before the infection would do it. Mind you, determining when the infection occurred might be difficult.
Perhaps just a full reinstall. It's an ambulance dispatch system - what happened yesterday is already history.
every 4 hours, and saves 30 days of these backups. The system is capable of providing hundreds of recovery points per day. I have access to restore a backup, from any point at any time.
And I'm running a 2 bob shopping cart, not a life critical ambulance dispatch system.
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And as far as individual PC backup is concerned, I doubt if anyone is more paranoid than I am about having enough FULL backups available. It started when my wife unplugged my 4K PC in 1978, so she could plug her iron into a double adapter. I lost about 8 hours work. :-)
Cheers Don...
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Don McKenzie
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Very hard to say what happened until we hear what O/S was being used, how it was infected, and how it was fixed.
Latest in:
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General manager Mike Willis said the time it took to fix the problem was "regrettable". "It has been a long time coming back online," he told Fairfax Radio Network this morning. "That's regrettable. But I'll say we wouldn't allow the system to be turned back on until our technicians cleaned every workstation." The cause and source of the virus was still not known, he said
So, it has "Workstations".
Cheers Don...
===================
--
Don McKenzie
Site Map: http://www.dontronics.com/sitemap
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These products will reduce in price by 5% every month:
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Bare Proto PCB for PIC or AVR projects?
"I'd buy that for a Dollar!".
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