A Ransomware attack launched on New Jersey’s Hackensack Meridian Health on December 2nd, 2019 reportedly led to the disruption in services at 17 urgent care centers, hospitals, and nursing homes. At that time the hospital authorities paid an undisclosed sum to the hackers to retrieve encrypted files to normalcy and announced that there was no evidence that the hackers accessed the locked-up data.
Now, the news is out that two persons hailing from Newark District have filed a lawsuit against the healthcare services provider seeking reimbursement for expenses made from their pocket, compensation for the damage and disruption and a penalty.
The plaintiffs also want Hackensack Meridian Health to undergo annual data security audits and improve the healthcare’s Cybersecurity posture; along with a facility to offer a 3-year credit monitoring service to breach victims for free- all a part of a secure injection relief.
Meanwhile, NRC Health which sells patient admin tools to hospital networks has admitted that a ransomware attack took place on its servers on Feb 11th of this year. However, the organization is confident that its patient data was never accessed by hackers.
NRC Health which manages patient survey systems and works with 80% of the 200 largest hospital chains in the United States stated that the email systems and internal communications were partially restored by the weekend through backups.
Paul Cooper, the CIO of NRC Health has admitted that the incident details have been reported to the FBI and an investigation into the attack has been launched.
