A cyberattack on the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center has caused system outages and disrupted patient care, according to BleepingComputer. The incident is a reminder that for healthcare organizations, and for any business with critical operations, ransomware is first an availability problem.

The available reporting is short, so this post sticks to what has been stated and flags what is still unknown.

What happened

BleepingComputer reports that the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center disclosed a cyberattack. The attack caused system outages and disrupted both patient care and academic activities. BleepingComputer's headline says the incident is a ransomware attack and that surgeries were disrupted.

The sources I have do not say:

how the attackers gained access

which threat group, if any, is responsible

whether data was stolen or encrypted

whether a ransom demand was made

how long it will take to restore affected systems

I am not going to speculate on any of these.…