The UnitingCare Queensland Security Incident
UnitingCare Queensland has suffered a cybersecurity incident on Sunday. The healthcare organization experienced an attack that made some of its systems inaccessible.
UnitingCare Queensland specializes in providing elderly treatment, disabilities assistance, emergency care, as well as crisis response services. The organization confirmed that on 25th of April, it became a target of a cyberattack that has rendered some of its systems unavailable.
According to their statement, some of the digital and technology systems of the organization are now inaccessible as a consequence of the cybersecurity incident.
To manage the situation, the organization received support from leading technical professionals and investigative consultants as soon as they became aware of the attack.
Following the incident, UnitingCare has informed the Australian Cyber Security Center (ACSC) and has been working closely with them on the investigation. So far, no details have been revealed.
In order to support its services, the health organization has implemented manual processes where possible. The services that cannot be manually supported are presently being rescheduled or redirected in order to ensure continuity of the health care services to the patients.
The organization said that it is presently not realistic to have a timeline to resolve the incident, considering that it occurred this week. However, UnitingCare reassured that their digital and technology team is doing their best to restore access to the affected systems as quickly and as swiftly as possible.
Recently, a number of ransomware campaigns have been targeting the sector with aged care and healthcare providers and the ACSC has issued an alert in accordance with that trend.
According to security professionals, aged care and healthcare industries are seen as very profitable targets for a number of cyber criminals. This is because these health centers retain confidential personal and medical data that is closely related to the maintenance of healthcare procedures and is essential for the right patient treatment. Therefore, a potential ransomware attack aimed at health and aged care providers can have a huge effect on their overall ability to operate and block the services to their patients.
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