According to a government official, Singapore has disconnected all of its computer systems from the Internet network at all the public healthcare centers to prevent cyber-attacks of such kind that caused its worst personal data breach.

Singapore had already stopped web access for civil servants back in 2016 as a precautionary measure against cyber-attacks but did not include public healthcare institutions. But officials have the facility to surf the web using separate or agency-issued devices.

In June this year, which can be said to be the most recent attack, hackers stole away personal data of more than 1.5 million patients, which included the prime minister’s drug prescriptions to which the government termed to be “a deliberate, targeted and well-planned cyber-attack”.

The task of disconnecting staff computers at public healthcare facilities from the internet was wrapped up on Monday by the government, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean said.

“We could, and should, have implemented Internet surfing separation on public healthcare systems, just as we have done on our public sector systems,” Teo said in a speech at an engineering conference.

“This would have disrupted the cyber kill-chain for the hacker and reduced the surface area exposed to attack. This has now been done.”

He did not tell the reason why the measure had not been adopted earlier.

The disconnection will cause “some inconvenience for patients and healthcare staff, as a result of the unavailability of some IT system connections that require the Internet,” the health ministry said in a statement on Monday.

The officials from the Government did not say who might have been behind the attack, and cyber-security experts said that it was very early to identify the infiltrators.

According to experts of the field, Internet Surfing Separation, or air-gapping, is common to be used in security-related fields in government and business, but not for normal government functions and does not at all guarantee success.

The idea being the step is that the computers used by government staff for their work are isolated from the wider internet, as they are connected to an internal network and thus reduces the exposure of official government data to cyber-attacks.

The procedure was criticized when it was introduced in the public services two years ago, with cyber-security experts calling it a retreat for a technologically advanced city-state that has adopted the term “smart nation” for all of its initiatives.

The government of the country has set up a four-member panel headed by a former judge assigned to investigate the cyber-attack which will report by the end of December, it said.

In a separate measure taken, the Monetary Authority of Singapore has told financial institutions to tighten customer verification measure in the wake of the health care attack, it said on Tuesday.

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