Cyberattack disrupts Massachusetts hospital’s operations

Several information systems at Signature Healthcare and Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital in Massachusetts have been impacted by a recent cyberattack, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

The incident resulted in the cancellation of chemotherapy infusion services for cancer patients and forced ambulances to be turned away. Downtime procedures were put in place by the hospital while efforts to restore the impacted systems and investigate the incident continue.

"Upon identifying suspicious activity within a portion of our network, we immediately activated our incident response protocols. We moved to down-time procedures to ensure high-quality patient care and safety," according to the hospital. Scheduled surgeries, inpatient care, and walk-in emergency services are still being carried out, but technology outages may cause some delays.

Such a development comes amid the recent spate of healthcare-targeted cyber incidents in the U.S., most prominent of which is the Iranian attack against leading medical device firm Stryker. There is "a sustained, high level of malicious activity targeting the healthcare sector," according to Health-ISAC Chief Security Officer Errol Weiss.