Ascension Investigates ‘Cyber ​​Security Incident’ After Network Disruption | News

TO UPDATE: Ascension released an updated statement on the now confirmed cybersecurity incident following “unusual activity” on certain network systems.

Part of the statement from an Ascension spokesperson reads:

“On May 8, Ascension detected unusual activity in our network systems. We have determined that this is a cybersecurity incident. We work 24/7 with internal and external consultants to investigate, contain and recover our systems following a thorough validation and review process. Our investigation and restoration work will take time and we do not have a timetable for completion.

Safe patient care remains our top priority as we address this cybersecurity incident. We actively support our ministries to continue to provide safe patient care with established response protocols and procedures in which our staff are well trained. It is expected that we will be using fallout procedures for some time. Patients should bring notes about their symptoms and a list of current medications and prescription numbers or prescription bottles to their appointment so that their care team can report medication needs to pharmacies.”

Ascension says if you have a medical emergency, please call 911 and emergency medical services will take you to the nearest available emergency room.

You can read the full updated statement here.

TULSA, Okla. – Ascension is investigating an apparent cybersecurity incident after the company noticed “unusual activity” on certain network systems.

Ascension said they responded immediately by beginning an investigation and activating their “remediation efforts.”

The outage occurred at St. John’s parent company, Ascension, but resulted in technical difficulties at the Tulsa hospital and all other Ascension locations.

Emergency care and in-house patient care continue as usual. The difficulties arise from the software and searching for information on their systems. This led to some longer queues for non-emergency cases and also problems arranging new patient appointments.

Both St. Francis and Hillcrest saw an increase in new patients today following the issue at Ascension.

A third-party expert, Mandiant, was brought in to assist in the investigation and Ascension has notified authorities.

Should sensitive information be compromised, Ascension said it would notify and assist those affected.

Ascension business partners are advised to temporarily suspend their connection to the Ascension environment and will be notified when reconnection is possible.

Ascension released the following statement in part following the cybersecurity incident.

“Our care teams are trained to deal with these types of disruptions and have procedures in place to ensure patient care continues to be safe and as minimal as possible.”

Ascension’s full statement on the network disruption can be found here.