Possible cyber attack causes Tallahassee hospital to delay procedures and take systems down

Some emergency case patients are being transferred from Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare and surgical procedures deemed non-emergency are being canceled following a security problem on Thursday. Tallahassee Medical HealthCare operates multiple care centers as well as a 772-bed hospital, all of which have taken down the systems.

According to the hospital, only Level 1 trauma patients are being accepted from direct surrounding regions as well as those experiencing a heart attack or a stroke, while some EMS patients are being diverted. The media is quoting knowledgeable sources stating that the breach is suspected to be a ransomware attack. The staff is not able to access patients’ digital files and laboratory results due to system downtime.

The staff was notified of the cyberattack on Friday by CEO Mark O’Bryant. The organization also stated that the incident is currently classified as an ongoing investigation. According to officials, law enforcement was contacted at the occurrence of the incident and they are currently working on the investigation with suitable agencies and experts.

The organization’s spokesperson Tori Lynn Schneider stated that numerous patients are being rerouted outside the organization, but no number was mentioned. She did mention that any procedures that were scheduled for Monday were canceled due to the breach.

Brett Callow, Threat Analyst at Emsisoft stated that this cyberattack at Tallahassee Hospital is already the second alleged ransomware attack at a hospital in the country this year, and it’s only February yet. In comparison, last year saw 25 attacks on systems that operated 290 hospitals.

The federal government has cautioned regarding ransomware that aggressively targets healthcare organizations and hospitals. The hospitals in the country are going through a bombardment of attacks of that nature, which picked up pace after the pandemic came into being at the start of 2020.

HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) cautioned that a hacktivist group called Killnet has its cross-hairs on the healthcare industry of the country and is using DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. The Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3) stated that these DDoS attacks can slow down or even stop the targeted systems by sending a large number of packets and connection requests every minute.

According to HC3, the group hacked a healthcare organization last year, one that works with the United States military members, and ended up stealing a lot of user data from the organization. According to HHS, the end of January 2023 revealed a possible attack list of Killnet including multiple healthcare organizations and hospitals, which was publicly shared by users.

Recently in July 2022, the FBI coordinated with Europol and other international law enforcement entities to penetrate the infrastructure of a ransomware gang called Hive. The group is known to have targeted entities belonging to more than 80 countries around the globe, totaling over 1,500 in number. Hive used servers and websites to get in touch with its members and these were seized by the agencies disabling the group’s capacity to attack. Since mid-2021, Hive has received more than $100M in ransom from the 1,500 global victims.

Also, Read the Latest updates on Technology & AI