More than two months after the computer attack against the southern Ile-de-France hospital center, a new hospital is the victim of a cyberattack.
“The Mignot hospital, in Chesnay, is the victim of a major cyberattack,” lamented Jean-Noël Barrot, the minister in charge of digital, on Twitter on Sunday. The health establishment therefore joins the list of French hospitals affected, after Oloron-Sainte-Marie, Dax, Villefranche or even Rouen.
Ransomware attack
According to France Info, the computer attack materialized on Saturday evening with the deployment of unspecified ransomware, one of the last phases of the cybercriminals’ plan before the ransom demand.
The minister however specified that the teams of the hospital of Versailles, in the West of Paris, had succeeded in isolating “the infected systems to limit the spread” of the ransomware before alerting the Anssi, the French cyberfireman. Seized of the case, the cyber section of the Paris prosecutor’s office entrusted the investigations to the gendarmes of the center for the fight against digital crime.
In addition to the transfer of six patients as a preventive measure, the white plan, these hospital emergency plans, was triggered, resulting in particular in the deprogramming of surgical operations and a reduced reception of new patients. If the care machines are still in operation, they are disconnected from the network, the computer system having been cut, thus obliging the personnel to another organization of work.
Cyber and health crisis
This hospital center has about 700 beds for a budget of about 300 million euros. The cyber crisis hits him while the French hospital system is particularly under strain with an unprecedented triple epidemic of bronchiolitis, influenza and Covid-19.
A health situation deemed “completely unprecedented”, was also worried on Friday, December 2 Public Health France. And which therefore risks being complicated, in western Paris, by the computer attack.
Restoring a healthy IT architecture takes time. For example, in its last update, in mid-October, the southern Ile-de-France hospital center said it hoped to restore 80% of the IT solutions necessary for its operation by the end of the month, allowing it to lift its white plan. beginning of November.
The total cost of the crisis for this establishment had been estimated at 7 million euros – 2 million for crisis management and 5 million for the reconstruction of the IT infrastructure. The government announced for its part at the start of the school year the release of 20 million euros to help hospitals better protect themselves.