Ransomware Attack Shuts Down Dozens of Florida Medical Imaging Centers
Date:
October 26, 2023
A ransomware attack shut down dozens of Akumin diagnostic medical imaging centers in South Florida, causing appointments for patients to be cancelled and making it impossible for doctors to view images for diagnosis and treatment.
The attack may have also compromised the personal health information (PHI) of hundreds of thousands of Akumin patients.
“Akumin first noticed suspicious activity on Oct. 11 and shut down its systems. The imaging centers immediately turned away patients and stopped scheduling appointments in eight states, including as many as 50 locations in Florida,” Health News Florida reports. “As of Wednesday, the centers were still closed.”
Akumin had recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but the company told the station the "restructuring process is not related to the ransomware incident."
In June, Illinois medical provider SMP ceased operations in part because of a devastating cyberattack, earning the dubious distinction of being the first hospital to publicly link a ransomware attack to its closure.
Takeaway: A recent study revealed that ransomware attacks against the healthcare sector have bled the US economy of tens of billions of dollars in over the past seven years, with 539 attacks reported impacting nearly 10,000 healthcare facilities and over 52 million patient records compromised.
Ransomware attacks are one of the biggest threats facing every organization today, and healthcare providers have been hit particularly hard. There is no way to argue against the fact that ransomware attacks on healthcare providers pose a significant threat to human life.
The healthcare system is largely operated by non-profit entities who work on tight margins, so this sector often lacks the appropriate budgets and staff to maintain a sound security posture.
Criminal ransomware groups know that the impact of an attack against healthcare organizations does not just disrupt operations, it directly affects the lives of their patients and puts the entire organization at risk.
Legacy security tools were simply not designed to address the unique threat that ransomware presents, and this is why we keep seeing destructive ransomware attacks circumvent these traditional security solutions and impact healthcare organizations.
Unfortunately, given that healthcare providers are a favorite target of some of the most notorious ransomware operators, we are likely to see more regional healthcare providers suffer serious disruptions and even organizational failure following ransomware attacks.
Halcyon.ai is the industry’s first dedicated, adaptive security platform that combines multiple advanced proprietary prevention engines along with AI models focused specifically on stopping ransomware – talk to a Halcyon expert today to find out more. Halcyon also publishes a quarterly RaaS and extortion group reference guide, Power Rankings: Ransomware Malicious Quartile.
