Originally Posted by
hoodie
Having been at the front line when the attack happened... At the hospital I worked at some systems still ran on XP, the IT department wanted to upgrade but some departments (Pathology in my experience) used a system which was built on XP. It worked and if the Path labs wanted to upgrade the OS then the Lab system was not certified on any other platform. The system supplier could provide an upgrade , reputedly for £1m which the hospital simply did not have.
With some systems the suppliers would not allow system security updates as this could cause the clinical system to fail, so if IT carried out an update which caused problems the system supplier washed their hands. It also helped if the hospital could afford to pay maintenance fees to ensure upgrades happened.
A direct consequence of cost cutting, hospitals had to prioritize budgets. If it worked.....