WINDHOEK, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- Namibia's Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS) on Tuesday reported a cyberattack targeting its Pharmaceutical Management Information System (PMIS) dashboard, which tracks essential medicine stock levels and patient statistics across public health facilities.

MoHSS Executive Director Ben Nangombe said in a statement that the breach, discovered on Dec. 13, involved unauthorized access to data stored on the ministry's server. The attack primarily impacted the PMIS dashboard, which is used by healthcare workers to support decision-making in pharmaceutical supply planning.

According to Nangombe, while no personally identifiable patient information was compromised, the names and email addresses of healthcare workers, especially pharmacy personnel, were accessed.

"Our assessment of the breach has confirmed that the PMIS dashboard has been accessed, as appears on some of the shared website files and database schema. Our initial findings indicate that the dashboard remained operational after the breach until the hosting server was manually shut down and isolated ministry officials," Nangombe said.

The ministry has not confirmed whether the underlying database was fully copied.

Nangombe said the ministry is redeploying the dashboard in a more secure environment with updated security patches, resetting user credentials, and restricting access to essential users only, with stricter password policies to be enforced to minimize the risk of future data leaks.

The ministry assured the public that ongoing investigations are being carried out to understand the full extent of the breach and to implement further security measures. Enditem

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