Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (SickKids)

History

2022: Ransomware Virus Attack

On December 19, 2022, SickKids Hospital in Toronto, Canada's largest pediatric medical center, reported a hacker attack: the institution's IT systems were hit hard by a ransomware program.

Initially, it was said that the cyber incident affected some of the hospital's resources. The attack received Code Gray status, which means a system failure. The official notification said that the treatment of patients continues as usual and that there is no evidence of theft of personal information or personal medical data of customers.

SickKids Hospital. Canada

The incident appears to have affected only a few internal clinical and corporate systems, as well as some phone lines and web pages. Protective procedures have been activated where appropriate. We notified our partners from government organizations and medical institutions, and also attracted third-party experts to resolve the problem as soon as possible, the hospital said.

But already on December 23, 2022, it turned out that the consequences of the attack were much more serious than originally expected. The ransomware restricted doctors' access to lab and imaging results, leading to longer wait times for patients and queues. In addition, processes related to the issuance of prescriptions were affected. Specialists had to urgently start backing up information.

Later, it was possible to restore telephone lines and an internal time accounting system for calculating staff salaries. But patients still face delays in diagnosis and treatment due to system outages. The hospital admits that it may take weeks to fully restore the IT infrastructure. None of the ransomware operators have yet claimed responsibility for the attack.^[1]

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