Great Plains center hit by ransomware attack

A few days ago the Great Plains center was hit by a ransomware attack that forced its staff to to pen and paper.A few days ago the Great Plains Health medical center was hit by a ransomware attack that forced its staff to switch to pen and paper.A few days ago the Great Plains center was hit by a ransomware attack that forced its staff to to pen and paper.

The Great Plains Health medical center was the victim of a ransomware attack, early this week, the malware has infected its computer network and the personnel to switch to pen and paper to maintain activity.

The attack took place on Monday and was detected at 7 p.m., the internal IT staff immediately started working to mitigate the threat,

“At approximately 7 p.m. last evening, ransomware was detected in the Great Plains Health computer network. The GPHealth information systems team immediately identified the issue and worked through the night to minimize the impact to local health services as much as possible.” reads a statement published by the organization on Facebook.

“We are confident that patient information was not breached in any way,” said Mel McNea, chief executive officer. “We will however, do a full audit to further investigate.””

The impact on the operations of the Great Plains center was important, on Tuesday, GPHealth announced that it was canceling many non-emergent patient appointments and procedures due to the ransomware attack. Fortunately, surgeries and select imaging procedures were not impacted by the infection.

According to GPHealth chief executive officer Mel McNea the likelihood that patient data have been exposed after the attack is low, anyway, the organization launched an internal investigation to understand the extent of the attack.

The organization already reported the incident to law enforcement, at the time of writing it is still unclear the family of malware that infected its systems and how attackers have launched the attack.

The organization confirmed that currently has restored its operations, but it is facing problems with phone lines.

“In some clinics (particularly orthopaedics), people can call in and leave a message, however the call does not ring in the office. We are checking voice mail frequently and calling people back right away. Please leave a voice mail if promoted until we have the matter resolved”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Great Plains Health, hacking)

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