MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Hackers are putting lives at risk at hundreds of hospitals across the United States, and a new report from tech giant Microsoft says it's only getting worse. NPR cybersecurity correspondent Jenna McLaughlin reports.
DINA CARLISLE: Everything went down, and nothing was communicated amongst anyone.
JENNA MCLAUGHLIN, BYLINE: Dina Carlisle is a registered nurse from Michigan. She's also a union president representing hundreds of nurses who work at Ascension Providence Rochester Hospital.
CARLISLE: So May 8, my people over at Ascension called me, and they said, we think everything just went down. We're not sure.
MCLAUGHLIN: It was the nightmare scenario. Criminal hackers broke into Ascension Healthcare, a network of over 100 private Catholic hospitals and senior living facilities across the United States. The nurses were in the dark, Carlisle said. In some cases, they couldn't even find their patients in the hospital. For Carlisle, it was clear - hackers were putting patients' lives in danger.
CARLISLE: We just lived through a pandemic, and it was the worst amount of death I've ever seen. And then to think, what could ever be this bad, you know? It's like - and here it is.
MCLAUGHLIN: For a health care professional to compare the experience of enduring the COVID-19 pandemic to caring for patients during a ransomware attack, Carlisle's story is personal. It's unfortunately one of many. But lately, researchers have also been working together hard data to illustrate the impacts of this crisis. The numbers are disturbing. According to a new report from Microsoft, ransomware attacks on health care have gone up over 300% since 2015. Here's Sherrod DeGrippo, the report's author.
SHERROD DEGRIPPO: Health care and hospitals are a target that threat actors love because they have an urgency around getting back up and running, and they tend to have patient care as their No. 1 focus, meaning any time lost is not acceptable.
MCLAUGHLIN: The report also relies on research from an emergency room doctor, who also happens to be a cybersecurity expert.
CHRISTIAN DAMEFF: You know, we're continuing to see these attacks impact the care of patients. It's increasingly untenable from a national security perspective, and that's something that terrifies me.
MCLAUGHLIN: Dr. Christian Dameff is at the University of California, San Diego. He cofounded UCSD's Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity. One of the center's biggest findings, a key part of Microsoft's report, is that a ransom attack impacts health care in an entire region. If one hospital is hit, a nearby hospital is suddenly flooded with emergency room patients. Doctors are overloaded and can't always prevent health care emergencies like strokes or heart attacks.
DAMEFF: As we've recognized this as a human issue, a whether or not patients will survive question, not just whether or not their privacy will be preserved, that's given me hope.
MCLAUGHLIN: Hope because Dameff thinks this community is starting to get their arms around the problem. But mapping its contours isn't easy. According to UC San Diego, 70% of a hospital's digital connections come from medical devices like CT scanners rather than computers, creating a complex web of vulnerable and critical services. Going forward, it will take a complex web of experts to tackle this problem.
DAMEFF: Doctors and nurses and economists and policy folk, you have to bring all those folks to the table to make up the next generation of solutions that are really going to help keep patients safe.
MCLAUGHLIN: That includes everything from training young doctors and nurses to revert to paper when networks are down to building a backup system of replacement technology that can be used in a crisis. It's about being more resilient because at this point, every hospital is a target. Dina Carlisle, the nurse and union president in Michigan, is clear-headed on the stakes.
CARLISLE: I think at some time we're all a patient. We're having babies, grandchildren. Our parents are getting older. It's so important that we make sure this cyber safety is in place so that our patients are safe.
MCLAUGHLIN: So that all of us patients are safe. Jenna McLaughlin, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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