A hospital in Michigan is feeling the pressure after suffering a ransomware attack earlier this month. On July 5th, Caro Community Hospital, Caro Medical Clinic and Caro Quick Care lost access to their phones, email services and patient records as a result of the ransomware attack.
According to CEO Marc Augsburger, the ransom note accompanying the attack provided a specialty email, which the hospital was to contact to determine what kind of bitcoin payment would need to be made to recover their locked data.
After contacting the hacker, the hospital was notified that their encrypted files would cost them about $120,000.
The decision to shut down electronics such as servers and computers was made quickly following the attack. In addition to servers and computers, the phone systems which operate through the computers were also affected.
According to Augsburger, the attack did cause disruption to the hospital. He explained that although inconvenient, staff is well trained on keeping paper-based records in the event of a disaster and actually practices those methods, making the disruption more bearable.
Although at this point little information is available on what kind of ransomware attack this was, FBI and other entities indicated this was a brand-new strain.
The CEO states that they do not believe patient’s personal information was compromised.
Augsburger also stated that nearly two weeks following the attack, almost all hospital operations are back to normal. FBI and local police are still searching for the person or persons responsible for the attack.
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