A Major Hospital was Cyber Attacked

Well sort of, popular TV series Grey’s Anatomy featured an episode last week where the hospital in the show was cyber attacked. It started with multiple departments experiencing some technical difficulties.  Enter confused internal onsite IT guy, Tim, who is overwhelmed trying to figure out what is going on with all the computers in the whole hospital. Sounds like a lot of work for one guy doesn’t it? Normally day to day a small IT department onsite dealing with minor IT problems sounds like a good cheap plan until a disaster strikes.

A black screen came on their computers with a message from the hackers. The message stated:

“Hello, Grey-Sloan Memorial. Currently, we control your hospital. We own your servers. We own your systems. We own your patients’ medical records. To regain access to your medical records, you need an encryption key, which only we have. You will need to pay us exactly 4,932 Bitcoin to retrieve the key. Failure to pay this ransom in a timely manner will cause your records and your systems to be destroyed.”

You can see a preview from ABC’s Facebook page:

They frantically start trying to figure out what bitcoins are, and how much USD they equal. Bitcoin is a digital currency that is used worldwide. The current value of 1 bitcoin = $78613.5, and changing every day and they are very hard to obtain.

The whole episode goes through the hospital and doctors reacting to not being able to use ANY technology. It seems like a nightmare.  A lot of it is TV and designed to be entertaining and a little farfetched to believe that could happen. Here’s the thing it has happened and will continue to do so. Maybe not to the extent of this TV show dramatics. Hospitals, doctor’s offices, even banks and financial institutions, any place or business that holds vital information is the main target of today hackers. Now is the time to get serious about prevention and detection when it comes to cyber-attacks, it is not a matter of if but when there will be an attack or data breach. We have seen it happen event this year at the Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center in New York.

Ransomware has gone primetime, it is now time to get serious about your business’ cybersecurity strategy. Here are 5 ways to prevent a data breach here, and 4 cyber security needs every business should have here. If you want to learn more talk to Thrive today.

And if you are wondering what happened to Grey-Sloan Memorial, you’re are going to have to wait like the rest of the Grey’s Anatomy fans until the show comes back after the holidays.