CNN
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A hospital network in East Texas has been unable to admit ambulances into its emergency rooms since Thanksgiving because they are “potentially dangerous.” [cyber]This is a security incident,” a hospital spokesperson told CNN on Friday.
UT Health East Texas, a hospital network, operates with “established downtime procedures” as hospitals investigate “potential security incidents” and work to get computers back online , spokeswoman Alison Pollan said in an email.
Pollan did not respond to subsequent calls seeking more information about the incident or the hospital’s response. She declined to answer further questions via email.
Headquartered in Tyler, Texas, UT Health East Texas operates 10 hospitals and more than 90 clinics in the region, serving thousands of patients annually, according to its LinkedIn page.
The East Texas health system is just the latest hospital group to be forced to refuse ambulances due to an apparent cybersecurity incident. In the past nine months alone, cyberattacks have diverted ambulances from hospitals in Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, and Pennsylvania.
The cyber incident at UT Health East Texas began Thursday when the hospital network “became aware of a network outage” and moved to lock down the network, according to a statement from the hospital network to CNN.
The hospital network initially said Thursday that it expected its computer network to be restored “within the next 24 to 36 hours,” but it’s unclear whether that will happen.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), two federal agencies responsible for helping hospitals protect themselves from hackers, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The FBI, which is also responding to the hospital hack, had no immediate comment.
Federal officials and critical infrastructure operators like hospitals and power plants are especially wary of the threat of ransomware and other cyberattacks during the long weekend, when many Americans are off, and cybersecurity teams are stretched to their limits. may have been reached.
Since the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, hundreds of healthcare providers across the United States have been forced offline by cyberattacks. Healthcare organizations often lack the cybersecurity resources to deal with threats.
Despite increased attention from medical associations and federal authorities, the problem persists. CISA last week released a detailed cybersecurity plan to protect hospitals from hacking.
Alan Liska, a ransomware expert at cybersecurity firm Record Future, told CNN on Friday that there will be 209 publicly announced ransomware attacks against U.S. healthcare organizations in 2023, compared to 162 in 2022. It increased from