E-Patient Update: Hospitals Should Share Ransomware Updates

A few weeks ago, a California hospital quietly fended off a ransomware attack without paying a ransom to the attackers. According to Health Leaders Media, Keck Medical Center of USC was hit with a ransomware assault on servers at two hospitals, but managed to fix the problem and retrieve its data.

Employees at Keck Hospital of USC and Norris Comprehensive Cancer Care found ransomware on two servers on August 1, said Keck Hospitals CEO Rod Hanners in a statement on the matter. The attack encrypted files on the servers, which made their data unavailable to hospital employees. However, Hanners reported, the hospitals had no evidence of a breach of patient information.

Still, given that some sensitive information was contained in folders encrypted by the malware, USC notified patients about the breach, Health Leaders reports. Data that could (at least theoretically) have been accessed by the attackers included names and dates of birth, health information such as treatment and diagnosis information and some Social Security numbers.

If what I’ve read is accurate, the crew at Keck did a great job. They got things under control very quickly, and chose to do the right thing in notifying patients about the breach. (And in all truth, the attack might not have been much of a big deal — perhaps one launched by a script kiddie using Ransomware as a Service tools — which could explain why the hospitals seem to be relatively unruffled.) Still, my feeling is that they could have communicated more.

A patient’s perspective

As I ponder the events above, I do wonder whether the professionals managing this particular ransomware attack understand what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a ransomware episode. So here’s a few things to consider from a patient’s perspective:

  • Ransomware is scary: While I’m healthcare technology writer and somewhat familiar with ransomware attacks, they are still new to most of the public. They may turn out to be just another infection vector for your network, but they come across as a dark force to consumers. Be prepared to educate and calm us.
  • People don’t know what to expect: I was due to have a cardiac procedure done by a doctor affiliated with Washington, D.C.-based MedStar Health a couple of weeks after it suffered a ransomware attack. While the news media made it clear that the hospital chain was paralyzed for a time, nobody bothered to tell me what the impact of this paralysis would be. It would have been better if MedStar facilities and doctors reached out to patients in immediate and near-term need of care to clarify.
  • We need progress reports: Clearly, the Keck attack didn’t amount to much, but other ransomware attacks, such as the MedStar incident, can’t be resolved overnight. As patients, we need to know roughly how long our providers may be at less than full capacity. Keep us updated or you’ll lose our trust.

With any luck, healthcare organizations will continue to improve their ability to fight back ransomware attacks, and in time, be prepared to treat them as little more than road bumps in their security efforts. But until then, it makes sense to pull out all the stops and keep patients extra well-informed.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

2 Comments

  • Of course one could argue another approach. The attack was identified and remediated quickly. There was no evidence that patient data has been breached.

    So, what did notifying the public achieve? As the author points out it created anxiety. As it turns out needless anxiety.

    She calls for more education and calming for the patients. Well, education sounds good enough but how exactly do you calm a patient about something that even our government has been able to do little to prevent? Currently the practice of the various governmental agencies that healthcare is beholden to is to educate and then punish the victim (healthcare). Apparently it is assumed that if healthcare is not successful in preventing a ransomware attack they must have not done enough.

    So, do not be terribly surprised that healthcare tends to be a little reluctant about reporting these incidents. Likely the tendency will be to only report those that are clearly a matter of breach.

  • Mike,
    It’s a fair point and a tough balance. If you were one of the patients that was breached, would you want to know?

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