United Health Care Centers is located in California and provides health care services and operates facilities servicing several counties in California. This ransomware attack affected all of its locations and resulted in patient data theft.
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According to Bleeping Computers, their source informed them that United Health Care Centers were forced to shut down their entire network due to this ransomware attack. The attack was initiated by the “Vice Society” ransomware group, and the attack took place in August.
Purandar Das, President, and Co-Founder at Sotero, an encryption-based security solutions company, has offered the following thoughts on this attack:
“This is the worst-case scenario being played out in real life. As the administration and other agencies are advocating and, in some cases, making ransom payments illegal, this is a potential fallout. Organizations, while grappling with restoring their systems and dealing with loss of critical care systems also have to worry about patient data being leaked and made public.
The attackers, with nothing to lose, will go to extremes to force an organization to capitulate. The long-term damage to individual customers is hard to fathom let alone estimate. Another potential fallout is cyber insurance. It is almost a given that premiums will escalate and potentially be unattainable.”
Purandar Das, President, and Co-Founder at Sotero
According to Bleeping Computers, United Health Care Centers systems are back online but they did not report exact numbers or any other data to give an idea of the impact of this attack.
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