- Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) has resumed normal operations, restoring its computer systems, following what it referred to as a “security issue” on February 3.
- Systems suddenly came back online Wednesday, with the hospital stating it is working with law enforcement and state and federal agencies to manage the ongoing investigation.
- Uncertainty remains as to what happened as TMH public relations officers refused to confirm or deny if the security issue was a ransomware attack.
Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH), the victim of a suspected ransomware attack, announced on Wednesday that it has resumed normal operations, restoring downed computer systems.
The hospital suffered what it referred to as a “security issue” on February 3, stating that it was forced to take all of its IT systems offline. TMH additionally had to reschedule all non-emergency patient appointments and divert EMS patients to other local medical facilities.
Concerns proliferated as TMH’s systems remained unusable over the span of nearly two weeks, with the Federal Bureau of Information (FBI) stepping in to investigate and potentially remedy the ongoing problems.
It was announced on Wednesday that all systems were suddenly back online, along with the assertion that the hospital is working with law enforcement and state and federal agencies to manage the ongoing investigation.
“We have transitioned back to electronic medical records and are no longer using paper documentation,” TMH said in a statement. “More importantly, TMH is no longer diverting Emergency Medical Services patients and has resumed providing trauma, stroke, and heart care in our region. We will also begin scheduling non-emergency surgeries and outpatient procedures, which had been postponed during the downtime”
Uncertainty remains, however, as to what exactly happened. Despite questioning by The Capitolist, public relations officers representing TMH refused to either confirm or deny that the security issue was in fact a ransomware attack. Traditionally, ransomware attacks introduce malware into an organization’s electronic systems designed to disrupt operations until payment demands are met.
Rather than offer insight or directly answer questions, we were simply referred to their most recent news update indicating that little progress was made on recovering operations.
Further, a source who wished to remain anonymous indicated last weekend that TMH was waiting on an insurance payout in order to pay ransom demands related to the suspected attack. This, of course, was several days before the hospital announced that it remedied the ongoing system outage.
Similarly, public relations representatives refused to answer questions related to the received information, again directing to a generalized news update.
It’s ridiculous that remote employees had to use our Paid Time Off hours while the systems were down. It was not our fault that this happened. Wouldn’t insurance cover this sort of problem and reimburse the hospital for remote employees wages? Our IT team is dispersed all over the country.