Healthcare providers have been in the cross hairs of cyber bad actors for quite some time. In the past, hospitals of all types and sizes have suffered material data breaches of Protected Health Information (PHI), network disruptions and losses arising from the payment of ransomware demands.
Universal Health Services, a chain of hospitals operating in the U.S. and Britain, had their computer networks knocked offline by a ransomware cyberattack which forced ambulances to be redirected and certain surgeries to be sent to other hospitals. Although there have been no reported patient deaths or injuries as a result of this incident, the disruption to patient care appeared significant given that 400 hospitals and 90,000 employees were affected.
Similarly, there were no reported patient injuries or deaths resulting from the 2017 WannaCry cyberattack which caused a significant disruption to numerous U.K. based healthcare facilities.
However, it was reported that a hospital based in Dusseldorf, Germany was subject to a ransomware attack which resulted in a patient death, the first such reported due to a cyber-attack. The incident affected 30 servers, which crashed…
