- New York Blood Center announces it was hit by a ransomware -attack
- It has notified the police but said its operations were hindered
- No details of attackers or the consequences yet
One of the largest independent, community-based blood centers in the world has suffered a ransomware attack that paralyzed its operations.
In a public announcement, the New York Blood Center (NYBC) said it was working to restore its systems and had notified the police of the attack.
“On Sunday, January 26, the New York Blood Center Enterprises and its operations department identified suspicious activity that affects our IT systems. We immediately engaged third-party cyber security experts to investigate and confirm that the suspicious activity is the result of a ransomware event, ”the message reads. “We took immediate steps to help contain the threat and work extensively with these experts to restore our systems as quickly and as safely as possible.”
Blood companies at the intersection
Other details are not known at this time. We do not know who the threat actors are or how they managed to access NYBC’s IT infrastructure. Since ransomware -attackers usually steal sensitive information, it is safe to assume that the same thing happened here. However, we do not know how many people are affected or what kind of information may have been stolen.
NYBC earns over 75 million people all over the United States. Every year, it collects approximately 400,000 blood donations and distributes more than 1 million units of blood and blood components to almost 200 hospitals. Therefore, the number of potentially affected people can be quite large and the stolen information can be sensitive.
Blood donation companies appear to be at the intersection these days. Earlier this month, the news that Oneblood broke a nonprofit medicine organization that is crucial to the operation of health companies throughout the southeastern United States lost sensitive donor information in a ransomware attack that happened last summer.
The move disturbed services across several US states where the organization operates with a ‘significantly reduced capacity’.
