DUBLIN, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Irish government said on Monday there have been no further reported incidences of the WannaCry ransomware in the country.
But the government said it is still possible that further incidences will arise and a sustained period of vigilance will be required, both in terms of updating and patching software and monitoring equipment.
On Saturday, a suspected case of the ransomware attack was identified in a computer system in a healthcare facility in southeast Ireland's Wexford city. The infection at the facility was finally isolated and prevented from spreading.
The facility, which is owned by a voluntary organization, is not controlled by the government health agency HSE and is therefore not part of HSE's computer network.
"The situation is being monitored on an ongoing basis, and the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) remains in close contact with international counterparts and with public and private sector entities in Ireland, both in terms of the dealing with the threat and taking measures to ensure that the impact of any future variants of this malware is limited," the government said in a statement.
The NCSC is also cooperating with the cyber crime bureau of the Irish police and with the defense forces around this issue, and will bring any evidential material to the attention of the police immediately, it said.
Earlier, the HSE said it was taking precautionary action to protect its IT systems following the ransomware attack on Britain's National Health Service (NHS). Currently, the HSE remained disconnected from receiving external email for a further 48-hour as a measure of additional protection.
So far, anti-virus software was deployed to approximately 52,000 health system PCs and 2,350 servers within the HSE. In addition, Microsoft patches were added to over 28,000 new machines.
The WannaCry ransomware virus has rapidly spread across computer systems in around 150 countries, including Russia, China, Italy, Russia and Britain. On Friday, Britain's NHS network was affected, shutting down many of its systems and affecting services.
The ransomware attack is boiling down to a computer virus that makes users' computers useless unless a payment is made to those who hacked their system.
