Here’s How 7 Institutions Dealt with Recent Ransomware Attacks
Methodist Hospital in Henderson, Kentucky, declared an internal state of emergency after experiencing a disruption to its network access on March 18. In that ransomware case, the hacker demanded $1,600 (or four bitcoins) to restore the system.
As hospital officials consulted with the FBI, they also credited their emergency response plan with limiting the attack’s impact.
“We have a pretty robust emergency response system that we developed quite a few years ago, and it struck us that as everyone’s talking about the computer problem at the hospital, maybe we ought to just treat this like a tornado hit, because we essentially shut our system down and reopened on a computer-by-computer basis,” David Park, the hospital’s attorney, said.
The virus came through the hospital’s email filter and restricted use of some web-based services.
After five days, the hospital regained control of its computer systems without paying the hacker, who used the Locky version of ransomware. Few details have been released about the case (seeing a pattern?) as the FBI continues to investigate.
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