Digital Forensics Dispatch

University of Vermont Hospital System Faces Major Cyber Attack During Pandemic

November 17, 2020

Recently NECN.com reported on a cyberattack that caused a widespread outage for the University of Vermont Health Network, Vermont’s largest hospital. Hospital patients were unable to log into their personal portals to access their personal health information as the IT staff and outside forensic examiners worked to document the incident and begin recovery.

While it has yet to be confirmed, it seems likely this attack was related to a rash of recent ransomware attacks affecting hospitals all over the country. In fact the FBI released a warning in late October alerting the healthcare industry that cyber criminals were stepping up efforts against hospitals and other healthcare related systems in an attempt to extort ransoms for the return of encrypted data. This warning would have been dire even in the best of times but with the world still solidly in the midst of a global pandemic, the situation is all the more troubling.

While much of the computer systems appeared down at the hospital, officials reported that for the most part all was operating normally as they have plans in place for these types of incidents. The ER was still able to handle local trauma incidents; however, reports indicate that some elective procedures were rescheduled to ease pressure.

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