As Lurie Children's Hospital continued to grapple with a system outage for a sixth day on Monday, hospital administrators provided an update in which they recognized the "incovenience and concern" caused to families, employees and community providers.
Administration last week revealed the hospital was dealing with a "cybersecurity matter" that resulted in the loss of phone, email and computer services. Sources previously told NBC Chicago that the FBI was aware of a cybersecurity issue affecting the hospital and was providing assistance.
In a statement on Monday evening, the hospital said its "top priority remains providing safe, quality care to our patients and communities we serve" and it "recognizes the frustration of not having clarity on when this will be resolved."
The investigation into the cybersecurity incident remained ongoing, and teams were "working around the clock to resolve this matter."
"Please understand this process takes time and know that we have highly experienced, capable and empathetic teams of both internal and external experts responding to this matter," the statement read in part.
The hospital was also "taking steps to mitigate the disruption and maintain continuity of care."
Hospitals have become a favorite target of hackers according to cybersecurity experts. A recent study by Checkpoint Security found that hospitals are third behind education or research systems and government or military systems in the number of attacks launched each week. “They are targeting hospitals because hospitals will pay,” said Pete Nicoletti of Checkpoint.
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“There is usually a huge incentive for them to act quickly and work towards paying a ransom,” said John Bromfield of Vistrada Consulting Services. “When lives are in the balance, they have to act quickly,” he said.
Hospitals are targeted bot only because they pay ransom, Nicoletti said, but because their data is valuable to hackers on the dark web because patient data can be sold to hacker who could then stage their own phishing attacks using what appears to be legitimate bilking data from the hospital.
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Lurie has established a call center to address the needs of patients' families and community providers. People are urged to call 1-800-543-7362 for questions and concerns, such as non-urgent patient requests, information regarding scheduled appointments and prescription refill requests.
The call center is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Sunday.
