According to a report by Le Monde, the Rouen-Charles Nicolle University Hospital is currently struggling to recover from a devastating ransomware attack that hit them almost a week ago. It is one of the largest hospitals in Northern France, with 2,500 beds and 10,000 staff, so the disruption is affecting many hundreds of people in need of help and care. At the moment, the ransomware worm has spread to around six thousand computers in the hospital, while the IT team has decided to shut down the rest to prevent the spread.
This means that the hospital is currently running at a significantly reduced performance level, as test results cannot be shared between offices, there can be no central patient triage and management system, nothing can be printed, and visit and operation. In this situation, priority is being given to emergencies, while the hospital’s IT team is working feverishly together with the French National Agency for Information Systems Security to get systems . According to what has been revealed to the public, there have been no ransom demands, so even if the hospital wanted to pay someone, it would be impossible.
According to reports, the rumors of a ransom demand of 1500 euros for each computer (9 million euros in total) are not true. Possibly, the hospital did not keep many backups in general, so it is very likely that the patients' data will now be irretrievably lost. As the IT team manager told the press, they had covered about 25% of the recovery path as of Monday and expect the process to continue for at least another week.
While caregivers, nurses and doctors say that patients are not at risk, everyone admits that the time of care has been significantly extended, to several hours to be exact. As we have seen recently, even minutes of delay in emergency situations can have a serious impact on the mortality rate of patients. A study by Vanderbilt University showed an increase of 36 deaths per 10,000 cases of heart attack in hospitals that suffered a data breach. Many patients are currently being referred to the Elbeuf hospital, where some of Rouen’s surgical procedures and sterilization services are now performed.
