Some services remain down at Eastern Connecticut Health Network and Waterbury Health on Tuesday, days after the hospital systems’ parent company reported being hit by a ransomware attack.
Eastern Connecticut Health Network, or ECHN, operates Manchester Memorial Hospital and Rockville General Hospital in Vernon. Waterbury Health operates Waterbury Hospital. Both are owned by Prospect Medical Holdings, a California-based company that also owns hospitals there as well as in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
The company said Tuesday there were no updates and did not answer questions regarding when services and locations that have closed will be back up and running or if confidential information was exposed in the attack.
ECHN’s website as of Tuesday still displayed a banner stating it “along with all Prospect Medical facilities, is experiencing a systemwide outage.”
“We are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible and regret any inconvenience,” the banner stated. It included a link to a page listing which services and locations were closed.
As of Tuesday, the page said Evergreen and Tolland Imaging, outpatient blood drawing, urgent care and its Women’s Center are closed, along with outpatient medical imaging on weekdays.
Waterbury Health’s Facebook page also listed several locations or services that were shut down due to the “data security incident.’
“We are following downtime procedures including the use of paper records. The outage has affected some of our outpatient services, mostly diagnostic imaging and blood draw and some patient appointments,” the organization said in a post on Tuesday. “We have contacted and will continue to contact any affected patients.”
The post said Waterbury Health’s blood draw locations are closed, except for an outpatient blood drawing location at Waterbury Hospital.
Women’s Imaging and Open MRI in Southbury are both closed, as is Diagnostic Radiology Associates, which has locations in Waterbury, Middlebury and Southbury.
The FBI confirmed last week they were investigating the ransomware attack.
The phrase refers to a type of cyber security breach where adversaries plant malware or break into a computer system and either lock critical parts of it behind encryption, or threaten to leak sensitive information online unless a ransom is paid. One federal interagency memo called the type of attack the “fastest growing malware threat” and warned the attacks target everything from homes and businesses to government networks.
Hospitals are emerging as a target for the schemes. Researchers studying the effects of cyberattack on hospitals wrote in a paper published in May that cyber attacks “should be considered a regional disaster,” because the attacks strain the resources of other nearby providers.
Hospitals are vulnerable to ransomware scams and are targeted by thieves “because they possess so much information of high monetary and intelligence value to cyber thieves and nation-state actors,” wrote John Riggi, senior advisor for cybersecurity and risk at the American Hospital Association.
The exact extent of the ransomware event at Prospect remains unclear.
In a statement Monday, the company said that it was “in the process of responding to and addressing a data security incident that has disrupted our operations.
“Upon identifying the incident, we immediately initiated an investigation and took our systems offline to protect them. We also launched an investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity specialists and are working closely with law enforcement,” the statement continued. “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.”
“PMH’s information technology teams are working around-the-clock to securely restore access to our systems as quickly and as safely as possible, and in a manner that prioritizes our ability to provide patient care,” the statement went on to say. “While this incident has resulted in operational disruptions at our hospitals and affiliated providers, our clinical staff are trained to provide care in these types of situations. PMH physicians, nurses, and staff are implementing workarounds to help mitigate any disruption and provide uninterrupted care to our patients.”
