BERLIN– Though the investigation into the ransomware incident at Atlantic General Hospital is ongoing, officials confirmed Monday that the facility is once again fully operational.
As of Feb. 13, the outpatient walk-in lab and outpatient imaging department, both areas impacted by a late January ransomware attack, were open and fully operational, according to a statement from Atlantic General Hospital (AGH).
“AGH leadership continues to work with their incident response specialists and reported the event to the FBI,” the statement reads. “Collaboratively, they are actively investigating to determine whether any sensitive data may have been impacted. At the time of this release the investigation is ongoing.”
The Berlin hospital experienced a ransomware attack on Jan. 29 that created network outage issues. While interruption to patient care was limited, AGH operations impacted included the outpatient walk-in lab, pulmonary function testing, outpatient imaging and RediScripts.
Monday’s statement from the hospital indicates the facility is once again fully operational.
“Since the onset of the event, hospital officials have worked with forensic investigators and their cybersecurity consultants to assess the overall impact of the event and restore all network systems,” the statement reads. “Throughout the event the hospital continued to safely provide care for inpatients, those in need of emergency services, patients in the primary care and specialty offices through the Atlantic General Health System and those in other ancillary locations such as the wound center, cancer center and behavioral health crisis center, and conduct elective and emergency surgeries using downtime procedures.”
The investigation into the attack is ongoing. Ransomware attacks, which typically involve locking and encrypting the victim’s data until a ransom payment is made, are becoming more and more frequent, particularly for hospitals. Days after AGH was attacked, hospitals around the world were reportedly targeted by pro-Russian hacking groups. ChristianaCare experienced a denial-of-service attack on is main website though that incident was resolved within a few hours.
