Nova ScotiaThe provincial government says there’s no evidence a widespread computer outage on Friday was caused by a cyber attack. There’s no evidence the outage was caused by a cyber attack, says provinceCarolyn Ray · CBC News · Posted: Dec 03, 2025 3:45 PM EST | Last Updated: 4 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 3 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.Every hospital in Nova Scotia had to switch to paper records after their computer systems crashed on Friday. (Mark Crosby/CBC)The provincial government says there’s no evidence a widespread computer outage on Friday was caused by a cyber attack.The IT outage knocked out several provincial government systems, while all of Nova Scotia Health’s online programs were down for about two hours.The outage meant all hospital staff had to switch to using paper for everything from patient intake to ordering hospital meals.”We did call in more additional staff to help support those downtime procedures,” said Alyson Lamb, the executive director of health services for Nova Scotia Health’s central zone. She said it was fortunate the outage happened at around 3:30 p.m., when most staff were already at work, rather than in the middle of the night. “We know when we have systems go down that it impacts a lot of people. Moving to downtime procedures — although people are well versed and teams are well versed — it still creates more challenging circumstances.” No surgeries cancelledLamb said some surgeries were delayed, but none were cancelled. “As soon as we were back up, we finished those cases,” she said. “There was a slight delay just to ensure that we knew what was going on and that we had all the procedures in place so we can maintain patient care.” Downtime procedures are used when staffing is down or there are outages for various reasons. Scott McKenna, the chief information officer for Nova Scotia Health, couldn’t recall the last time they’d experienced such a large-scale issue. But he said staff have trained for these types of situations. “Someone could be working on the road and cut an internet line,” he cited as an example. “Things happen in today’s world, and it has impacts. It gives me a lot of confidence that patient care, patient safety continues in a world when things go wrong.” The health authority’s IT systems are managed by the provincial government, which also experienced outages. In a statement, the province’s Department of Cyber Security and Digital Solutions said systems are now stable and it would not provide any further information. In this case, services started to come back online within two hours, minimizing the disruption, said McKenna. “We were very fortunate that way.”MORE TOP STORIESABOUT THE AUTHORCarolyn Ray is a videojournalist who has reported out of three provinces and two territories, and is now based in Halifax. You can reach her at Carolyn.Ray@cbc.ca
Cause still unknown of last week’s Nova Scotia Health IT outage
