Major US Health System Reveals How Hacker's Gained Access
18 June 2024
It's been a headache- or more- for a large US non-profit healthcare organization for over one month now. Ascension Health, based in St. Louis, Missouri, but with 140- hospitals across many states, was hit with a ransomware crisis, shutting down normal operations for weeks. The system struggled on, but it has taken significant efforts from staff to resume full operations. EHR's were just recently restored.
Medical news publication Becker's Health IT has reported that the hackers gained entry thanks to one employee's mistake. The health system's release is noted in Becker's: "An individual working in one of our facilities accidentally downloaded a malicious file that they thought was legitimate." This was enough to collapse the whole hospital system!
It is most important that staff are reminded regularly to be cautious about downloading materials. It takes but one mistake to cause a major disaster across a hospital- or healthcare chain.
