Days after a ransomware attack paralyzed Ascension Health System, shutting down its electronic records system and forcing it to divert emergency care to some of hospitals , the organization said this weekend that systems are being restored.
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“While restoration efforts continue in earnest, our focus is on restoring systems as safely as possible,” the St. Louis-based health system said in a statement Saturday. “While we expect this process to take time to complete, we are making progress and systems are being restored in a coordinated manner across each of our care sites. We will continue to share updates on our recovery process.”
Ascension also said it was in close contact with the FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and as it stated: “we share information about threats with the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (H-ISAC) so that our industry partners can take steps to protect themselves from similar incidents.”
On Friday, CNN, citing four sources, reported that Ascension Health System was hit by ransomware with indications that the Russia-linked Black Basta group was behind the data breach
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On the same day, H-ISAC sent a warning to its healthcare member organizations saying that Black Basta “has recently carried out attacks against the healthcare sector.”
Ascension, a nonprofit, universal health system with 140 hospitals in the U.S., said on May 8 that it initially detected “unusual activity on select technology network systems.” Ascension referred to the data breach as a “cybersecurity incident” and said it was working “around the clock with internal and external consultants to investigate, contain, and remediate systems following a thorough validation and audit process.”
In addition to its electronic health records system being unavailable, the health system said MyChart system was down. MyChart allows patients to access their medical records and communicate with their healthcare providers. Ascension said some phone systems and various systems for scheduling certain tests, procedures and medications were also down due to the ransomware attack.
See also: New KageNoHitobito ransomware targets Windows users
What are the most effective prevention measures against attacks ransomware
One of the most effective measures to prevent a ransomware attack, such as the one against Ascension, is to educate your staff. Employees should be informed about the dangers of ransomware attacks and how to recognize dangerous emails and suspicious links. In addition, using reliable security software is crucial. This software should include ransomware protection and be updated regularly to protect against the latest threats. Creating and regularly updating backups of important data is also an important step. Finally, applying security updates and patches to operating systems and applications is another important preventive measure. updates often include fixes for known vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit.
Source: crn
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