On the morning of October 31, Osaka General Medical Center in Osaka City, Japan reported a system outage due to a ransomware attack on the country’s EMR system.
After the attack, the 865-bed hospital immediately postponed non-emergency outpatient services and switched to manual operations with paper records, according to a report. bulletin of public broadcaster NHK. The incident affected about 1,000 patients, another news release said.
Hospital officials were quoted as saying that the hackers encrypted their files and demanded that they pay the ransom in Bitcoin. However, the hospital will not negotiate with them.
The General Hospital is designated as an advanced emergency medical service center and a cancer hospital in Osaka Prefecture.
TREND TO BIGGER WOMAN
This is the fourth known cyber incident involving Japanese hospitals this year. In January, both Nippon Dental University Hospital in Tokyo and Kasugai Rehabilitation Hospital in Asai Prefecture reported breaches in their respective IT systems. Handa Hospital in Tokushima Prefecture also lost access to the EMR system following a cyber attack in June.
A series of recent cyberattacks in Japan also extend to government-run websites, including the official government portal e-Gov. Japanese authorities have been looking into the possible involvement of pro-Russian groups in these hacks, according to a report. news report.
Hospitals and other healthcare providers in other parts of Asia Pacific have also been hit by cyberattacks, including in New Zealand Pinnacle Midlands Health Network in late September and Australian pathology lab Medlab in February.
ON PROFILE
As global ransomware attacks in the healthcare industry continue to increase, it’s important for organizations to secure their network-physical devices, according to global cybersecurity firm Claroty. global cybersecurity company Claroty.
“The convergence of IT and OT systems, as well as the interconnection of IoT and IoMT devices, is leaving organizations exposed to new cyber threats,” said Claroty CRO Simon Chassar.
He recommends that organizations “narrow their vulnerabilities and gain full asset visibility across all of their network’s physical systems by implementing patching processes for those systems.” OT, IoT devices, and IoMT.” Furthermore, segment the network with asset-class network policies to limit the movement of malware and provide security teams with continuous network monitoring to mitigate the impact of malicious threats. ransomware attack”.
