What happened to the Lazio region and why a large part of its IT systems don't work?
During the weekend the region Lazio was affected by what the regional councilor for Health and Social Health Integration Alessio D'Amato, and the president Zingaretti , did not hesitate to define the most serious attack ever occurred on Italian territory. Specifically, it would have been a ransomware , which would have affected not only the data processing center of the Lazione region, but also those of backup (at least in part), making it difficult to restore services. At the time of writing, the Lazio region website is not yet reachable , and with it also the booking system for COVID-19 vaccines; but these are not the only offline services.
Financial data and balance sheet data have not been touched. As soon as everything is restored we intend to give absolute priority to health services. 112 and ares 118 are active and have never been interrupted as well as the numbers of the civil protection operations room.
Zingaretti reassures the data involved, but the inefficiencies at least continue, given that the system of Cup reservations and that of vaccination reservations, as already reported, were also affected. The attackers, who hit from abroad, would have come into possession of various personal data , but not health data, and would have asked for a ransom in Bitcoin , having encrypted the region's data, which would therefore be unusable at the moment. Various hypotheses are still open about “how” the attack took place, including that of a mole , including an external one.
And if no one argues about the severity of the incident, it is equally clear to note that the number of similar attacks is constantly growing all over the world, and already represents one of the most serious IT problems of today. But not a mitigating factor.
Everything is started from the “violation of a user of an employee in smart working”: the confirmation comes from the Lazio health councilor, Alessio D'Amato. And from there “the keys to the door that gives access to the Ced, the system that manages health data, building practices and many services to the citizen were changed”.
Unfortunately there it will still be necessary to wait for a complete restoration of services: “we believe that before August 15th we will be able to restart at least a good part of the services for the regional population, such as reservations for vaccines, also because a transmigration to a new cup, which is the single booking center. However, a wider problem remains for other parts, where times are longer.
