Several hospitals located in western Germany have fallen victim to ransomware attacks, with the attacks limiting the operations of the hospital while the malware is in effect. The first victim, Lukas Hospital, reported falling victim to constant pop-ups and made the decision to pull the plug on everything electronic in anticipation of further attacks. The hospital even went so far as to take their email server offline, in an effort to eliminate any potential avenues for more cyber-attacks. Fortunately, their drastic and decisive measures helped to prevent further damage, mitigating harm to only one server out of 200 within the hospital.
Another hospital subjected to attack, Klinikum Arnsberg Hospital, fell victim to a similar attack only two days later by means of opening a malicious email that immediately infected one of its servers. The hospital took the same approach as Lukas Hospital and shut down its systems immediately and luckily kept the damage to only one server. Klinikum Arnsberg has reported that the virus can easily be dealt with and cleansed and that no permanent effects will take place. Until the server is completely cleansed, Klinikum stated it will continue using only pen and paper, and that while most operations are running as intended, it had to push back several important operations that rely on in-house technology to perform so that there will be no chance of complications. To help prevent and weather potential Ransomware attacks, be sure to remain up to date on all security and software defense measures and have backup files for important data in place at all times.