Ascension continues to investigate cybersecurity event, notified the FBI
Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin (KXAN Photo/Andrew Choat)
AUSTIN (KXAN) — It’s now been several days since Ascension, a healthcare company in Central Texas, said it detected unusual activity on network systems, which they believed to be a “cybersecurity event.”
The announcement came on Wednesday, May 8.
“At this time we continue to investigate the situation,” Ascension said. “We responded immediately, initiated our investigation and activated our remediation efforts. Access to some systems have been interrupted as this process continues.”
The company said its teams are trained for these kinds of disruptions. Ascension said its hospital and facilities are open.
“There has been a disruption to clinical operations, and we continue to assess the impact and duration of the disruption.”
Ascension
However, several hospitals are currently on diversion for emergency medical services. Ascension said it doesn’t have a timeline for when things will be resolved.
Who is investigating?
The company said it’s investigating what information, if any, may have been affected by the situation.
Over the weekend, Ascension updated that its working with cybersecurity experts to investigate the ransomware incident.
The company said it notified law enforcement, as well as government partners like:
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation
- The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
- The Department of Health and Human Services
- The American Hospital Association
“While our restoration work continues in earnest, our focus is on restoring systems as safely as possible. While we expect this process will take time to complete, we are making progress and systems are being restored in a coordinated manner at each of our care sites. We will continue to share updates on our recovery process.”
Ascension
What services are impacted?
Ascension said the systems currently unavailable are:
- Electronic health records systems
- Various systems utilized to order certain tests, procedures and medications
The company said some non-emergent elective procedures, tests and appointments have been temporarily paused while it tries to bring systems back online.
