Ardent Well being Providers, a healthcare supplier working 30 hospitals throughout six U.S. states, disclosed at this time that its methods had been hit by a ransomware assault on Thursday.
After the incident, it needed to take its whole community offline, notify legislation enforcement, and rent exterior specialists to research the assault’s extent and affect.
“Ardent Well being Providers and its affiliated entities (“Ardent”) turned conscious of an info expertise cybersecurity incident on the morning of November 23, 2023, which has since been decided to be a ransomware assault,” the group mentioned on Monday.
“In consequence, Ardent proactively took its community offline, suspending all consumer entry to its info expertise functions, together with company servers, Epic software program, web and medical applications.”
Impacted hospitals are at present diverting all sufferers requiring emergency care to different hospitals of their space. Nevertheless, they will nonetheless present medical screening and stabilizing care to sufferers arriving at their emergency rooms.
“Every Ardent hospital continues to judge its capability to securely look after critically sick sufferers in its Emergency Room as we work to carry hospital methods again on-line. That is quickly altering, and the standing of every hospital shall be up to date because the scenario improves,” Ardent added.
Affected person care companies are nonetheless energetic in Ardent’s clinics, although sure non-urgent elective surgical procedures have been briefly halted because the group is working to revive encrypted methods.
Ardent’s groups will straight contact people requiring rescheduling of appointments or procedures. Regardless of its IT groups’ efforts to reinstate entry to impacted companies, Ardent can’t present a definitive timeline for the restoration course of.
Information theft not but confirmed
The well being supplier has but to substantiate if any affected person well being or monetary knowledge has been compromised throughout the assault and the extent of a possible knowledge breach.
Rebecca Kirkham, Ardent Vice President & Chief Communications Officer, mentioned all obtainable particulars have been shared on the corporate’s knowledge safety replace web page when contacted by BleepingComputer earlier at this time.
“Ardent has additionally applied further info expertise safety protocols and is working with specialist cybersecurity companions to revive its info expertise operations and capabilities as rapidly as attainable,” Ardent mentioned at this time.
“The investigation and restoration of entry to digital medical information and different medical methods is ongoing.
“Ardent remains to be figuring out the total affect of this occasion and it’s too quickly to know the way lengthy this may take or what knowledge could also be concerned on this incident.”
With a workforce comprising 23,000 workers, Ardent oversees operations throughout 30 hospitals and greater than 200 care services in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, New Jersey, and Idaho and collaborates with over 1,400 affiliated healthcare suppliers spanning these six states.
