Ransomware Went Undetected for a Month — Exposing Thousands of Patient Files
St. Mark’s Surgical Center, located in Fort Myers, Florida was the victim of a ransomware attack in April. However, the attack was not discovered until May, when the medical facility conducted a forensic investigation. The event that triggered the investigation is not being released. The investigation discovered not only ransomware, but also found over 33,000 patient files had been exposed. The surgery center informed all of the impacted patients, as well as offered one year of free credit monitoring services.
To avoid future infections and breached, Health Data Management reports,
“Since the attack, the provider has installed a more robust firewall with unified threat management services; installed a backup and data recovery system, including hourly imaging and offsite replication to redundant data centers; developed policies to ensure all devices are fully updated; and implemented new antivirus software.”
Hopefully the new antivirus the facility chose includes application whitelisting. If not, it is only a matter of time before the blacklist fails them again.
Other Ransomware Attacks
To see a full list of ransomware attacks that have taken place, you can click here. We have also created a ransomware map, see below, of the ransomware attacks that have taken place in the U.S. this year.
