A French hospital was forced to reschedule procedures after cyberattack

A French hospital was forced to return to pen and paper and postpone medical treatments after a cyber attack.

A cyber attack hit Hospital Simone Veil in Cannes (CHC-SV) on Tuesday, impacting medical procedures and forcing personnel to return to pen and paper.

The Hospital Simone Veil in Cannes is a public hospital located in Cannes, France. The hospital provides a range of medical services and healthcare facilities to the local community and surrounding areas.

CHC-SV has more than 2,000 employees and has a capacity of more than 800 beds.

The website of the hospital states that “Cyberattack in progress! All non-urgent consultations should be reconsidered.”

Non-urgent surgical procedures and consultations scheduled for this week have been postponed.

The French hospital was forced to take all computers offline while the telephone lines were not impacted The hospital is investigating the incident with the help of ANSSI, Cert Santé, Orange CyberDéfense, and GHT06.

The organization hasn’t received any ransom demands and hasn’t identified a data breach.

“CHC-SV was the target of a cyber attack on Tuesday morning. General cybercontainment was one of the first decisions of the crisis unit. This radical decision was taken very quickly in all sectors. All computer access was consequently cut off. Telephony continues to work.” reads the announcement. “There have been no ransom demands or data theft identified at this stage. Investigations remain ongoing.”

The hospital ensured continuity of operations in emergency care, internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics, geriatrics, pediatrics, psychiatry, home hospitalization, and rehabilitation.

“The CHC-SV had never been the victim of a cyberattack of this type. Cyber ​​risk is one of the priority risks identified in the establishment’s risk map. Exercises have been held over the past few months, allowing for strong responsiveness to the event.” concludes the announcement.

“The return to normal will depend on technical investigations and the necessary catch-up. Feedback from other hospitals that have been the subject of a cyberattack shows that this return to normal can take a long time.”

In December 2022, the Hospital Centre of Versailles was hit by a cyber attack that forced it to cancel operations and transfer some patients in other hospitals.

In August 2022, the Center Hospitalier Sud Francilien (CHSF), a hospital southeast of Paris, suffered a ransomware attack over the weekend. The attack disrupted the emergency services and surgeries and forced the hospital to refer patients to other structures. According to local media, threat actors demand a $10 million ransom to provide the decryption key to restore encrypted data.

Pierluigi Paganini

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(SecurityAffairs – hacking, French hospital)