THE Health Service Executive (HSE) has been forced to shut down its IT system following a "significant ransomware attack".
The HSE were made aware of the attack during the night and were forced to shut down all national and local IT systems in order to protect them.
CEO of the HSE Paul Reid described the situation as a "major incident", adding that that the attack was "quite sophisticated."
Although the HSE has confirmed that patient safety has not been compromised, it isn't yet known whether or not the hackers have had access to patient record and other personal information.
"There is a significant ransomware attack on the HSE IT systems," the HSE said in a statement.
"We have taken the precaution of shutting down all our IT systems in order to protect them from this attack and to allow us to fully assess the situation with our own security partners."
It's understood that a ransom demand has not been yet.
"We are at the very early stages of fully understanding the threat, the impacts," Reid said on RTÉ's Morning Ireland.
"We did become aware of it during the night, we've been acting on it straight away. The major priority is to contain this, but is is what we call a human-operated ransomware attack, where they would seek to get access to data and seek a ransom for it."
It's understood that a ransom demand has not been yet.
Mr Reid said that there'd be an update on precisely what the attack means for the system's services later on today.
"[For now] everyone should continue to come forward [for hospital appointments] until they hear something different from us, in terms of services impacted."
It's understood that the Covid-19 vaccination programme hasn't been affected by the attack.
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