Memorial Health System, based in Ohio, is trending on Google for becoming a recent victim to a ransomware attack. Highly placed sources report that the IT systems of the healthcare organization were hit by a ransomware on August 15th,2021 affecting emergency services at over 64 clinics and three hospitals- Selby General, Sistersville General and Marietta Memorial.
Many traumas driven patients such as those hit by heart attack, strokes and kidney related issues were turned away from treatment as doctors and healthcare staff could not attend to the services on time because of digital disruption.
On August 18th,2021, Scott Cantley, the CEO of Memorial Health System, confirmed the news and stated that the IT staff were negotiation a solution with the hackers to restore the systems at the earliest. Meaning, they might pay a ransom to get back the access to their data through decryption.
In another incident related to ransomware targeting healthcare organization, St. Joseph/Candler(SJ/C), admitted that data of over 1.4 million people were fraudulently accessed by hackers in June this year.
An investigation launched in July,2021 by SJ/C found the hackers gained access to the healthcare network in December 2020 stealing sensitive details such as Health insurance details, medical record number, date of service, treatment details, DoBs, addresses, names, social security number, driving license number, patient records, billing details and other financial info.
St. Joseph/Candler is yet to confirm whether it is going to pay a ransom to free up its database from encryption. But sources say that SJ/C is disinterested in entertaining the hackers with a ransom payment and might seek expertise services to recover the data by other means.
Third, Tokio Marine Insurance Singapore(TMiS) LTD has confirmed that its databases were affected by a ransomware attack in the 1st week of August this year and sources say that the company is seeking security expertise to bail out itself from the incident.
TmiS, a business unit of Tokio Marine Group, has released a press statement that there is no impact on its regular operations and the malware impact did not reach the servers of other companies in the group.
