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A recent cyberattack in Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) resulted in its IT systems being taken offline and several non-emergency hospital procedures being temporarily suspended. Moreover, the healthcare institution’s network systems are still online to ensure continued services for patients.
The healthcare institution also said they are accepting Level 1 traumas for now, as the investigation of the attack incident is ongoing. Patients that needed urgent treatment were transferred to other hospitals.
Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) is a non-profit organisation catering to a 21-county region in North Florida and South Georgia. The institution is partnered with multiple speciality care centres, acute care and psychiatric hospitals, and is affiliated with 38 physician practitioners.
TMH hospital aimed to bring its services back online gradually.
While the healthcare institution’s IT department and relevant authorities are investigating the security incident, TMH hospital said they intend to gradually bring their systems back online to return to serving their patients full-time as soon as possible.
However, TMH hospital clarified that there is no definite time on when the investigations would be completed, but timely updates would be provided. Several steps to minimise service disruption was implemented to serve patients with minimal needs continually.
The institution has yet to release details about the security incident’s source and scope. However, security experts presume that it is the work of ransomware groups that have been targeting healthcare organisations across the US.
Many ransomware groups have been associated with attacks on healthcare firms in recent years, including Venus, Maui, Royal, and Zeppelin ransomware operations.
Thus, law enforcement agencies, such as CISA, FBI, and the HHS, have continually warned organisations about these threats, especially with the amount of damage these attacks could cause against hospitals and their patients with urgent treatment needs, not only with financial loss but also with people’s lives being put to risk.
For 2023, authorities claimed that this incident on TMH hospital is the second one performed by suspected ransomware groups in the US, with the first being the Atlantic General Hospital in Maryland.
