Vermont Health Network that serves a chain of healthcare organizations in Vermont and Upstate New York has confirmed that it became a victim of a cyber attack on October 28th,2020 crippling 600 of its applications with ransomware.
The IT staff of the healthcare network said that the attack was launched through a server vulnerability and the hackers were demanding an enormous sum as ransom. However, the technology staff of the hospital chain did not want to bow down to the demands of hackers and so are trying to regain data from the backups.
Dough Gentile, the Chief Information Officer of Burlington based University of Vermont Health Network(UVHN) confirmed the incident and stated that it might take at least a week’s time to restore the data as it needs to rebuild around 1,300 servers.
Reports are in that hackers accessed or stole no patient data.
After the cyber incident, UVHN has taken all security measures to heighten up its defense line against ransomware attacks.
Note 1- FBI issued a press statement on a last weekend that some adversaries were trying to hack into the networks of public and private agencies to steal data. And the cyber attack launched on Vermont Hospital Network that the attacks have already started.
Note 2- In 2020, especially after the Corona Virus launched lockdown started, threat actors are seen launching sophisticated cyber attacks where they first steal data and then encrypt a database until a ransom is paid.
