Can you believe that a ransomware attack on a healthcare provider has forced it to shut down its services by this year-end..? If not, here’s a news share that will enlighten your minds on the potential of a malware attack which has led to the closure of California based Wood Ranch Medical(WRM) services provider.
Going into the details, in August this year servers containing digital health records of patients related to Wood Ranch Medical were hit by ransomware. As a result of which data was encrypted including the data on the backup servers.
As the data recovery was not the possible rebuilding of medical records became a hard task for the IT staff of healthcare.
Since the hospital is not in a position to continue with the operations, it has made it official that it will close its practice and medical care operations from December 17th,2019. The said medical practitioner will then find another medical service provider to its on-account patients. All the WRM patients will be mailed the details of the ransomware incident and what to do next to protect or monitor their personal information.
Readers of Cybersecurity Insiders should note down a fact over here that WRM happens to be the second healthcare service provider to shut down its services in this year- as Michigan based Brookside ENT and Hearing Center stands first as hackers managed to wipe out the entire database of the service provider as the hospital staff failed to pay a demanded ransom of $7000 in BTC on time.
In the meantime, the US Senate has done a federal ramp up last week by endorsing the Cyber Hunt and Incident Response Teams Act drafted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The objective of the newly established Ransomware law will be to advise organizations on how to take protective measures against the prevailing cyber threats and how to deal with the situation if in case they get victimized by chance.
In shorty, the US Senate has passed a ransomware law that will provide public and private organizations legislative protection against cyber attacks and this includes cyber incidents hitting police departments, schools, educational institutions, hospitals, banks, and other businesses.
