Cyberattack causes multiple hospitals to shut emergency rooms and divert ambulances

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CBS News

Cybercriminals attacked the computer systems of a California-based health care provider causing emergency rooms in multiple states to close and ambulance services to be redirected.

The data breach happened at Prospect Medical Holdings of Los Angeles, which has hospitals and clinics in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Texas. Prospect Medical is working on resolving the issue, the company said in a statement Friday.

"Prospect Medical Holdings, Inc. recently experienced a data security incident that has disrupted our operations," the company said in a statement. "Upon learning of this, we took our systems offline to protect them and launched an investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity specialists. While our investigation continues, we are focused on addressing the pressing needs of our patients as we work diligently to return to normal operations as quickly as possible."

Officials with the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, the nurses union at Crozer-Chester Medical System, say the hospital has reverted to a paper system because most of the computers are offline, CBS News reported. The computers are unlikely to be back online until next week, according to the labor group, citing Prospect Medical.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/prospect-medical-cyberattack-california-pennsylvania-hospital/

[iluvtennis]

1. Wow 🙄 And that the computers systems are offline until next week is amazing. Not understanding why

critical medical systems like this don't have a "hot" standby system to do a switchover with.

I worked at couple of company where we had online e-commerce systems and we had duplicate of our production computer systems to use should we have an outage or breach. It amazes me that something as critical as medical computer system doesn't have backup system to use when outage or breach happens.

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What say ye @BumRushDaShow as I know you work in high tech.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. What has happened

is that the whole hospital system "industry" has been churned through for-profit vulture capitalists. So each flip of a hospital means more cuts to staff, equipment, and support.

[iluvtennis]

5. duh 🙁. n/t

[sybylla]

3. Right?

IT malpractice.

[LastDemocratInSC]

4. The company I work for creates and manages hundreds of mission-critical systems for other companies.

Each system has 2 back-up sites, at widely dispersed locations, and our periodic testing shows that the switch-over is so fast and effective that the users of the systems usually don't notice anything. We can quickly isolate an outside attack and prevent its spread to the backup systems - but all of this capability is EXPENSIVE to my company and our clients.

So, it comes down to this question: What do you value most? Continued safe operation or saving money by rolling the dice with a lesser solution or no solution at all?

[iluvtennis]

6. Love what your company does @LastDemocratInSC. With the use of computer systems growing

& growing, companies really need to implement infrastructure to deal with data breaches and system outages.

[lostnfound]

7. Well if it was something IMPORTANT --stock brokerage, luxury service-- it'd be worth it

But hospitals are for the MASSES, so they rate right below “speedy road maintenance” in terms of priorities.

[iluvtennis]

9. That's unfortunately true. Things need to change. n/t

[Skittles]

8. that would cost MONEY

which would mean LESS money for the vultures