UMMS (University of Maryland Medical System) investigating Malware attack on their Computer system

The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) is investigating the malware attack on their computer system, which occurred on December 9, 2018 (i.e. on Sunday), as per the hospital network.

Jon Burns, senior vice president and chief information officer of the hospital system, said that this ransomware-style attack affected around 250 devices out of the 27,000 devices of the hospital system.

Once the Maryland Medical System came to know about the attack on December 9, 2018 (i.e. on Sunday), at around 4:30 a.m., the hospitals took its devices and networks offline by around 7 a.m. In this attack, Burns said, the malware has not encrypted the infected computers, thus the hospital system didn't need to pay any kind of ransom for unlocking the devices. Moreover, the virus has been isolated before it gets spread further, he added.

Burns stated that the attack didn't affect the patient care, and also there was no proof that data of patient or any other kind of information was compromised in this attack. The 250 devices that were affected -- mainly desktop computers -- have been quarantined, whereas the remaining systems were back online by the morning of December 10, 2018, Burns added.

Burns said in a statement that "the measures we took to identify the initial threat, isolate it to prevent intrusion, and to counter and combat the attack before it could infiltrate and infect our network worked as designed". As per the medical system, the attack is same like the "other recent IT-system attacks experienced in healthcare and other industries".

According to Burns, the UMMS has notified the authorities and has already started working with the agents from the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and U.S. Department of Homeland Security for investigating about the attack.

Burns told Sun that "this was one of those things where nobody wants to go through it, but I think our organization responded in a very good way, both from a technical perspective as well as our caregivers".

The UMMS includes medical facilities in more than 150 locations, having hospitals in Bel Air, Baltimore, the Eastern Shore, Havre de Grace, Glen Burnie and Towson.

» SPAMfighter News - 12/27/2018