Ransomware Attack on Imperial Health impacted over 116,000 patients

Just some time back, a cybersecurity incident affecting dozens of schools systems in the Louisiana state of US has been reported. Now the network security experts reported that the Imperial Health, a physicians' network that is offering health services to over 100k people in the Southwest Louisiana, has suffered from a ransomware attack compromising a percentage of data storage in its systems.

The ransomware attack on the Imperial Health possibly breached data of 116,262 patients. As per the officials, system files as well as a database that is used by Imperial Health's CFO (Center for Orthopaedics) were encrypted when an unauthorized party succeeded in downloading the ransomware onto their network on May 19 of this year (i.e. 2019).

The database contained Protected Health Information (PHI) of 116,262 patients. Although no evidence of data theft or data access was uncovered during investigation by the network security specialists, it was still not been possible to rule out PHI breach. Thus the decision was taken of issuing notifications to the affected patients, so as to allow them take step to remove any danger of harm.

The database that was compromised contains personal as well as health information of the patients, who had earlier received medical services in Imperial's Center for Orthopaedics. The affected information differs by patient to patient, but may have included the names, telephone number, address, birth dates, medical record numbers, treatment details, Social Security numbers, diagnoses, provider names, medications, and various other clinical information.

Once the attack was detected, law enforcement has been reported about the incident. As per latest update on this incident, Imperial Health has managed to fully remove ransomware from their networks, apart from restoring the data successfully. The ransomware incident is still getting investigated by the law enforcement. A spokesman of the company added that the Imperial Health have since installed the new antivirus software in order to prevent similar kind of incidents in future.

Ransomware is continuing to plague healthcare sector. Just recently, Kentucky's Park DuValle Community Health Center has paid the hackers $70,000 in order to decrypt their data, after the providers have been locked out from their system for around two months.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/28/2019