For those in Ireland, the cyber attack affecting this province’s health care system must sound eerily familiar.

Aengus Cox, a reporter with the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ, has been covering the widespread systematic attack on the Irish health care system six months ago.

“It had a massive impact” says Cox, because most of the health services in Ireland are digital, resulting in a chaotic situation with people showing up for appointments that unbeknownst to them, had been cancelled.

Cox says to the best of his understanding, the cyber attack was in fact a ransomware attack.

He says the attackers were identified as a gang operating in Russia, who according to various reports, demanded the Canadian equivalent of $20-million dollars in bitcoin.

Irish officials were adamant that they would not be paying any ransom.

Six months after that attack, the Irish health care system is still recovering.

It took about a month, says Cox, before the HSE was able to confirm that three quarters of their servers were back up and running.

A month later, that was up to about 80 per cent, and four months later that was up to about 95 per cent.

Six months on, and the Irish health care system is still trying to work through the backlog of delays and cancellations caused by the cyber attack.

Privacy Consultant Questions Impact on Saint Pierre-Miquelon

Meanwhile, David Morgan Principal Consultant at Morgan Privacy Consulting says one thing that isn’t being talked about when it comes to the cyber attack is Saint Pierre-Miquelon.

He says a lot of people from Saint Pierre-Miquelon receive their acute services from Eastern Health, therefore there are likely quite a few patients from out-of-country who have been effected.