Singing River Health System took systems offline to deal with a cyber attack

Mississippi-based healthcare group Singing River Health System said it suffered a cyber attack that forced it to take several of its systems offline.

Singing River Health System is one of the largest hospital systems in Mississippi with several hospitals under its wing, including Pascagoula Hospital, Ocean Springs Hospital, and Gulfport Hospital.

In a recent notice of data breach posted on its website, Singing River Health System (SRHS) said that it detected unusual activity in its internal network over the weekend and immediately took several systems offline to mitigate the impact of the security incident.

SRHS also launched an internal investigation, with assistance from third party cyber security experts, to understand the nature and scope of the incident and notified law enforcement authorities about the same. Though the healthcare group took a lot of its systems offline, it continued to see patients who needed care.

“Downtime procedures remain in place as we continue to see patients. We are working very hard to provide more definitive information regarding what systems will be available and when,” SRHS said. It added that it is in the process of working to restore offline systems but the process could take some time to complete.

“Our IT security team is working around the clock, but due to the nature of this matter, this will take some time,” SRHS explained.

As a result of the security incident, SRHS said patients may expect delays in getting their lab results and radiology test results. It said that it will fax the results to their recipients as soon as they are available.

“Our clinical teams continue to work collaboratively to ensure our patients are receiving the highest quality care that they expect at Singing River Health System. Patient care is our top priority, and we have appropriate protocols that will allow us to deliver that care,” SRHS added.

SRHS is yet to share details about how the threat actors infiltrated its systems, the nature of the cyber attack and if any data has been exfiltrated from its internal systems. The healthcare system has promised to share more information as and when it is available.

Singing River Health System suffered a similar cyber attack in 2018 that involved unauthorised user activity that forced the healthcare group’s information systems team to shut down the entire computer network for days to deal with the incident.