December 2019 Newsletter

Cybersecurity: Beyond Human Training

A new blog post

On Wednesday, November 27, 2019, Great Plains Health, a hospital system in Nebraska, fell victim to a ransomware attack shutting down all hospital computer systems and forced the hospital to cancel all non-emergency procedures.

On Thursday, December 12, 2019, Southeastern Minnesota Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (SEMONS) reported a ransomware attack that may have exposed the Personal Health Information (PHI) of their patients. On September 23, 2019, hackers attacked a server used by SEMONS in a ransomware attack. The IT department intervened immediately and was able to restore the data quickly. SEMONS did not report a ransom demand or money paid to the hackers, but the facility had to inform their 80,000 patients of the threat.

On Friday, December 13, 2019, the City of New Orleans suffered a severe cyberattack, which led Mayor LaToya Cantrell to declare a state of emergency. The city's IT department immediately gave the order for all city employees to power down their computers and mobile phones and disconnect from WiFi. Additionally, the city servers were removed from their power sources to isolate the malware. The city's health department continues to have limited access to patient information, causing officials to reschedule appointments.

Do I have your attention yet? Here are three cyberattacks impacting the healthcare industry in the last month.