CANTON, New York (WWNY) – A cyberattack on Carthage Area Hospital and Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center is now a local lesson on the campus of SUNY Canton.
Cyber security professor Minhua Wang says the LockBit software used 4 weeks ago against the hospitals is extremely dangerous – but staff at Claxton-Hepburn stopped the criminals in mid-attack, and that helped the hospitals regain control of their systems.
“If we don’t stop them in the middle, they will continue the attack process to the end. They will encrypt your whole database and then make your whole hard drive to be encrypted and then all your data get lost,” said Wang.
The hospitals have not paid the demanded ransom and even though the deadline to pay has come and gone, no significant data has been released by the attackers.
Cybersecurity students like Calvin Reid say using real cyberattacks, especially ones that are local, help when developing anti-virus software.
“First, finding where it occurred at, how it occurred and breaking it down to potentially stop that from ever happening again, backing up any data, any security to then be able to prevent any other occurrences,” said Reid.
Wang says cyberattacks won’t stop and recommends organizations follow three steps:
- Have intrusion prevention and detection software
- Back-up hard drives
- Have ransom insurance
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