Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Florida Hospital Cancels Procedures, Diverts Patients Following Cyberattack

Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare was forced to cancel procedures and divert patients after taking systems offline following a Thursday night cyberattack.

Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) has canceled procedures and is diverting some patients following a cyberattack that forced it to take some IT systems offline.

Founded in 1948, the not-for-profit community healthcare system provides acute and other types of healthcare services to a 21-county area in North Florida, South Georgia and South Alabama.

On February 3, TMH announced that, late Thursday night, it fell victim to a cyberattack that forced it to disconnect some of its IT systems and start operating under downtime protocols.

On February 5, the healthcare services provider announced that the situation had not been remedied, with all non-emergency surgical and outpatient procedures initially scheduled for February 6 being canceled and rescheduled.

TMH announced that it implemented incident response protocols immediately after discovering the incident, and that backup and downtime protocols it has in place allow it to continue to provide care to its patients.

“We are still operating under downtime procedures, which means we are using paper documentation. We apologize for any delays this may create. We practice for situations like this, and we are prepared to provide safe, high-quality care to our patients during computer system downtimes,” the healthcare provider said on Sunday.

TMH also said that an investigation into the incident was ongoing, without providing details on the type of cyberattack it experienced or on whether any personal or health information was compromised during the attack.

However, the fact that the organization was forced to disconnect some of its IT systems to contain the incident suggests that ransomware might have been involved.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

SecurityWeek has emailed TMH for additional information on the incident and will update this article as soon as a reply arrives.

Related: Ransomware Hit 200 US Gov, Education and Healthcare Organizations in 2022

Related: Data Breach at Louisiana Healthcare Provider Impacts 270,000 Patients

Related: Healthcare Organizations Warned of Royal Ransomware Attacks

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

People on the Move

Mike Dube has joined cloud security company Aqua Security as CRO.

Cody Barrow has been appointed as CEO of threat intelligence company EclecticIQ.

Shay Mowlem has been named CMO of runtime and application security company Contrast Security.

More People On The Move

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Ransomware

A SaaS ransomware attack against a company’s Sharepoint Online was done without using a compromised endpoint.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.