May 8, 2024 at 05:33PM
Ascension, a major U.S. nonprofit health system with 140 hospitals and 40 senior care facilities across 19 states and the District of Columbia, has detected a cybersecurity event, prompting the organization to advise business partners to suspend connections to its systems. The incident has disrupted clinical operations, and an investigation is ongoing.
Based on the meeting notes, the key takeaways are as follows:
– Ascension, one of the largest private healthcare systems in the United States, has experienced a cybersecurity event, prompting the organization to take some systems offline for investigation.
– The healthcare system operates 140 hospitals and 40 senior care facilities across 19 states and the District of Columbia. It also employs 8,500 providers, has 35,000 affiliated providers, and 134,000 associates. In 2023, it reported a total revenue of $28.3 billion.
– The cybersecurity incident disrupted clinical operations, prompting an ongoing investigation to assess the impact and duration of the disruption.
– Ascension has informed its business partners to temporarily suspend connections to its environment as a precautionary measure. The organization will update partners when it is appropriate to reconnect.
– In response to the cyberattack, Ascension has informed relevant authorities and enlisted the expertise of Mandiant incident response experts to assist with the investigation and remediation process.
– The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently warned of threat actors using social engineering tactics to target IT help desks in the Healthcare and Public Health sector. These attackers aim to gain access to corporate resources by tricking employees into enrolling new multi-factor authentication (MFA) devices under the attacker’s control.
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