Ransomware attack disrupted emergency rooms at Ohio Hospital System

Ransomware attacks continue to threaten the healthcare industry, the last incident in order of time impacted the Ohio Hospital System.

The ransomware attack infected computer systems at the East Ohio Regional Hospital and Ohio Valley Medical Center reportedly caused the disruption of the hospitals’ emergency rooms.

The malware hit the Ohio Hospital System on Friday, Nov. 23, evening, according to The Times Leader newspaper, the hospitals were not able to accept ER patients via emergency responders.

“Emergency squad patients are being diverted away from East Ohio Regional Hospital and Ohio Valley Medical Center this weekend because the hospitals’ computer system has been attacked by Ransomware.” reads The Times Leader newspaper.

“Area emergency squads began transporting patients to other area hospitals after receiving notification of the full diversion.”

The patients were diverted to other area hospital emergency rooms.

Karin Janiszewski, director of marketing and public relations for the hospitals, explained that the two hospitals were able to handle walk-in ER patients.

“At the moment, our emergency rooms are unable to take patients by E-squads, but we can take patients by walk-in,” Janiszewski said. “Our IT team is working around the clock right now and we expect to have the issue resolved by (Sunday).”

The IT staff plan to completely restore normal operation by Sunday, November 25. The good news is that no data was exposed due to the ransomware attack.

“We have redundant security, so the attack was able to get through the first layer but not the second layer,” she added. “There has been no patient information breach.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – ransomware, Ohio Hospital System)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.