It is all too simple typically to think about {that a} cyber assault is confined to the digital world, and that – though disruptive – it could not have severe penalties in actual life.
Perhaps the assault which occurred final week in New York will make you assume in another way.
A cyber assault hit the infrastructure of Westchester Medical Heart Well being Community, impacting the pc programs of HealthAlliance Hospital in Kingston together with Margaretville Hospital and Mountainside Residential Care Heart.
In an try and handle what should have been a troublesome scenario, a call was made to close down all of Westchester Medical Heart Well being Community’s linked IT programs at 10pm on the night time of Friday 20 October, and to slowly deliver them again on-line on a rolling foundation over the weekend.
By Monday, all programs had been reportedly restored.
Nevertheless, through the interval when important IT programs had been offline a call was made to divert ambulances to different hospitals.
Though the hospitals underline that the choice was made to make sure affected person security it will have inevitably resulted in delayed take care of some sufferers and extra workload and stress for workers.
Westchester Medical Heart Well being Community says that it’s working intently with the New York State Division of Well being, has sought help from third-party cybersecurity specialists, and has knowledgeable regulation enforcement concerning the incident.
Though ambulances had been diverted because of the cyber assault, the hospitals remained opened all through and continued to simply accept walk-in sufferers who had been both handled on website or had been transferred to different services.
At current it has not been decided if any affected person information was compromised through the incident which sounds suspiciously like a ransomware assault.
Cybercrime can have actual, non-digital penalties. Some ransomware teams previously have claimed that they intentionally don’t goal healthcare organisations due to this, however it appears that evidently – all too typically – they’re in as a lot hazard as the remainder of us.
In August 2023, hospitals and clinics throughout a number of states discovered themselves offline for weeks as they struggled to revive programs following a cyber assault.
