Terrible, is what director Dianne Engels calls the hack at healthcare organization Joris Zorg in Oirschot. Last December, hackers penetrated client and employee data and that data is now being shared online. “The only thing we can do is try to limit the damage and inform those involved as well as possible.”
Joris Zorg has five residential care centers in Oirschot, Middelbeers, Vessem and Hoogeloon. The cyber criminals say they have stolen about a hundred gigabytes from the care group. That data is now out on the street. “We’re gutted,” Engels responds.
This concerns personal data of employees and clients. “We are now mainly concerned about that and we are focusing our attention on it. We have warned everyone to be careful, because this data can be used in phishing emails.” It is not yet clear whether there are also medical data on the street. “We do not yet have a clear picture of this. That is still being investigated,” says Engels.
According to the healthcare organization, there is no question of blackmail. The cybercriminals have not demanded any money in exchange for the stolen data. “The criminals have not filed a claim. They have indicated that they wanted to misuse our data.”
“You also don’t know how reliable the party you are negotiating with is.”
But Engels says that there would have been no payment anyway. And a conscious decision was made not to negotiate with them. “We have taken the position that we are not blackmailable. That sounds very harsh, but the question is also what it would yield. You do not know how reliable the party you are negotiating with is. So we have made our assessment. Hackers have also not mentioned an amount, so it has not even come to that.”
For now, the organization’s priority is to inform those involved as well as possible. “The only thing we can do now is damage control. In the meantime, we are doing a careful in-depth investigation.” For example, Joris Zorg looks at how hackers were able to penetrate their system. “We have always tried to be as vulnerable as possible, we take that very seriously. So there will also be a proper investigation to look at where we were so vulnerable.”
READ ALSO: Hackers break into a healthcare organization, stolen data is on the street