Wood Ranch Medical will be permanently closed due to a ransomware attack

Another healthcare provider now has announced that they will permanently close their doors due to a ransomware attack. This time the devastating ransomware attack happened at the Wood Ranch Medical of California's Simi Valley city. The Wood Ranch Medical has recently announced that they will get permanently close from Dec. 17, 2019.

On Aug. 10, 2019, Wood Ranch Medical suffered from a ransomware attack that resulted in their servers containing the electronic health records getting infected with ransomware. This ransomware attack has lead to widespread file encryption, and thus prevented the medical records from getting accessed. The damage to the computer system of Wood Ranch Medical was such that it was not able to recover data stored there.

Wood Ranch Medical had also created backups of the patient records, however those backups hard drives are also encrypted and thus cannot be used for restoring the medical records including patient data.

In this recent ransomware case, Wood Ranch Medical believes that the only aim of this attack was obtaining money and patient records were believed to have not been accessed by attackers or downloaded from Wood Ranch Medical's servers. Nevertheless, the affected patients were advised to take precaution and monitor credit reports as well as explanation of the benefits statements for any kind of fraudulent activity. The kinds of information possibly compromised included the names of patients, dates of birth, addresses, health insurance information, and health information.

The website of Wood Ranch Medical now displays substitute breach notice. The notice said that "WRM takes the protection of its patients' information seriously and sincerely apologizes for any inconvenience this incident may cause". This ransomware attack incident has affected 5,835 patients, as reported to the HHS. All the 5,835 patients were sent notification letters via mail, which includes information regarding the incident as well as steps one can take for monitoring and protecting their personal information.

In the coming two months, Wood Ranch Medical will be working with the patients for helping them and their families to find other alternative medical practitioners in this same area who will successfully serve their patients' healthcare needs.

Toll-free call center was also established by Wood Ranch Medical, in order to answer the questions about this incident as well as related concerns.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/17/2019