News Tribune reports that a primary care clinic in Ashland, Missouri decided to pay ransom when patient data were encrypted by ransomware. The type of ransomware and amount of ransom was not disclosed:
Namaste Health Care in Ashland is notifying about 1,600 patients its office experienced a security incident over the weekend of Aug. 12-13.
During that weekend, it is believed someone gained improper access into the office computer systems and remotely accessed Namaste’s file server.
According to a press release from office officials, the cyber attacker launched a ransomware virus/attack on the file share server, which resulted in the encryption of data housed on that server as of Aug. 14. Namaste took steps to protect patient information and its computer systems, but ultimately had to pay a ransom to the cyber attacker in order to restore and regain access to the affected data.
Read more on News Tribune.
A copy of the security incident notification is available on the clinic’s site, linked from the home page. DataBreaches.net sent an inquiry to the clinic asking for additional details about the ransomware and incident, but did not receive an immediate response. This post may be updated as more information becomes available.