Hospitals ask courts to force cloud storage firm to return stolen data

Hospitals ask courts to force cloud storage firm to return stolen data

December 29, 2023 at 03:26PM

Two New York hospitals, Carthage Area Hospital and Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center, are seeking a court order to retrieve data stolen in a ransomware attack last August. The stolen data, stored on a Boston cloud storage company’s servers, includes sensitive patient information. The hospitals have taken legal action to recover the stolen data.

Key takeaways from the meeting notes are as follows:

1. Two not-for-profit hospitals in New York, Carthage Area Hospital and Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center, have formed the North Star Health Alliance to collaborate on providing healthcare services across northern New York.

2. The North Star Health Alliance serves over 220,000 residents across specific areas in New York.

3. The hospitals suffered a ransomware attack by the LockBit group, resulting in the theft of sensitive patient data, which is now stored on servers belonging to Wasabi Technologies, a cloud storage company in Boston, Massachusetts.

4. Legal action has been taken to recover the stolen data from Wasabi’s servers. The hospitals are seeking a court order to retrieve the data and destroy any copies made by the ransomware group.

5. The LockBit ransomware group has a history of disrupting emergency care, with recent attacks affecting hospitals in Germany and Toronto. This has raised concerns about potential critical delays in patient care.

6. The LockBit ransomware-as-a-service operation has extorted at least $91 million from U.S. organizations following over 1,700 attacks since 2020.

These takeaways summarize the major developments and concerns discussed in the meeting notes related to the ransomware attack on the hospitals and the actions being taken to address the breach and data theft.

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