Ardent Health Services Ransomware Attack Impacts Six States, Forces Diversions From Emergency Rooms

By Scott Ikeda for CPO Magazine
Monday, December 4, 2023

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A ransomware attack on Ardent Health Services, a network of 30 hospitals that spans six states, disrupted emergency rooms and caused some patient diversions for at least two days in addition to taking down the patient portals used to schedule appointments and a system used for remote video conferencing with doctors.

Dr Ilia Kolochenko, Chief Architect at ImmuniWeb, notes that improved regulation and government support is very likely to be necessary to keep health services safe going forward: ” … healthcare industry cybersecurity budgets are usually smaller compared to most other industries, especially when dealing with small medical clinics or governmental entities. Healthcare institutions also struggle to hire cybersecurity talent amid tough competition on the market. Eventually most hospitals remain under-protected and exposed even to simple variations of cyber attacks. In the EU, with the arrival of NIS 2 directive, the situation may get slightly better but it will unlikely make any fundamental change: healthcare institutions will not magically start printing money and investing it in their cyber resilience. Akin to GDPR, NIS 2 may slightly improve the overall situation but is far away from resolving cybersecurity issues in healthcare industry. Thus, ransomware attacks will likely continue their steady growth making new victims in healthcare sector.” Read Full Article