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An Illinois-based healthcare institution has notified individuals that they have suffered a data breach incident after the Royal ransomware group added it to its list of victims. Based on reports, the attack could impact nearly 250,000 people and their personal information.
The affected entity is Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers. It revealed that they had discovered the incident last April and immediately responded with preventive measures.
The Royal ransomware group posed samples of stolen information from the healthcare institution.
A couple of months ago, the Royal ransomware gang published samples of stolen information from the hospital. However, the hospital stated in the same month that they were investigating the incident. Moreover, they have yet to specify the attackers’ identity since they are still investigating.
In addition, the affected entity claimed that there are exports of data to an external cloud storage platform operated by an unauthorised group. Current studies also said that the attackers have yet to demand ransom.
The possible data that the data breach incident exposed contains several essential and critical details, such as names, addresses, DoBs, SS numbers, medical record numbers, account numbers, and diagnostic codes of current and former patients at the affected healthcare institution.
Furthermore, the hospital also disclosed that the attack affected their former and current employees alongside their dependents’ and beneficiaries’ data like names, addresses, social security numbers and birth dates.
Reports also claimed that the hospital immediately reset the passwords of all employee accounts and took down mobile email access upon discovering the incident. The hospital’s security team also scoured and removed malicious files, improving their systems’ monitoring, logging, and detection capabilities.
After several investigation proceedings, the affected institution has compiled a listing of affected directories that the actors used to harvest and review restored files for potentially impacted data.
Cybersecurity experts explained that the Royal ransomware gang has exclusively targeted the healthcare sector for months. Therefore, clinics, hospitals, and other healthcare-related offices should improve their security to prevent or mitigate the potential impact of such threat actors.
