Details are emerging about a recent ransomware attack against VON Canada, the nation’s only nonprofit home and community care organization. Reports state that the organization discovered the problem on September 1 but as of now it hasn’t fully resumed normal operations.
They haven’t found evidence to indicate any employee, client or volunteer information has been compromised but they were forced to resort to manual operations for scheduling care and client information, compromising care for thousands of customers.
At this point, leading cyber-security experts are looking into the problem.
Caroline Seymour, Director, Product Marketing at Zerto:
“The news that VON Canada – Canada’s only national nonprofit home and community care organization – has been the target of a ransomware incident this month is concerning for the organization and the vulnerable clientele it serves. A recent analyst study determined that 50% of surveyed organizations have suffered an unrecoverable data event in the last three years. For most companies, customer loyalty, company brand and reputation are at risk. But in the health services industry, so much more is at stake: the health and survival of patients. Regrettably, prevention of these attacks is not always possible, but diminishing the threat is. For an industry that literally holds the care of thousands in its hands, it’s critical to take a more dynamic, modern approach to business continuity and disaster recovery (DR). Solutions utilizing Continuous Data Protection and hybrid cloud DR can help organizations like VON Canada better manage their IT infrastructures and achieve IT Resilience – so that downtime of more than mere seconds becomes a thing of the past.”
