Lessons From a Ransomware Attack: The Importance of Partnership & Collaboration

The following is a guest article by John Gaede, Director of Information Systems at Sky Lakes Medical Center.
Imagine a rural business is the victim of a cyberattack. A nefarious person or group convinces an unsuspecting employee to open an email promising a bonus. Within 12 hours, every piece of technology connected to that network, and every process needed to conduct daily operations, is paralyzed. 
Now imagine that business is a hospital. It serves 80,000 people and it’s the only one within 10,000 square miles. Add to the scenario a global pandemic that is steadily ravaging the nation’s healthcare system. On October 27, 2020, Sky Lakes Medical Center went dark. 
In a matter of hours, Sky Lakes became a healthcare facility without email, financial and clinical systems, or electronic medical records. Imagine that. How does a clinician administer quality care without knowing any of their patient’s medical history or allergies? How does a clinical laboratory run tests without its high-tech equipment? How does a physician provide real-time diagnoses and treatment with no picture archiving and communication system (PACS) or radiology information system (RIS)? And how does a healthcare facility continue operating with no revenue coming in and no way to communicate with patients, vendors or supply chain personnel?  
Each of the hospital’s 2,000 PCs, 650 servers and 150 applications went down simultaneously. The systems we relied on to keep the hospital running and ensur...

Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 21, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System IT Infrastructure and Dev Ops Security and Privacy 3M 3M Health Information Systems 3M HIS Abbadox Cohesity Cyberattacks Cybersecurity Electromek Diagnostic System FBI’s Source Type: blogs