The New York Blood Center (NYBC), one of the largest non -profit blood centers of the United States, says that it is experiencing interruptions of the service after being hit by a ransomware attack.
On Wednesday Nybc declared in a declaration that the organization detected suspicious activities on its IT systems on January 26, which since then confirmed was an attack on ransomware.
“We took immediate measures to help contain the threat, including the intake of some offline systems,” said Nybc in the declaration.
NYBC, which provides blood to over 200 hospitals in the north-eastern United States and medical services related to transfusion to over 500 hospitals at national level, warned that the accident caused operational interruptions. The non -profit said that the activities of the donation center and the blood units may have to be reprogrammed and that the processing times for blood donations “could be longer than normal”.
The organization said that it is working to restore its systems as quickly as possible, but has noticed that “at this moment, we do not have a specific calendar for the restoration of the system”.
This happens when the NYBC declared a blood emergency last week after seeing a drop of 30% of the donations that the organization states that “paralyzed the blood flow of the region”. The donations of all blood groups are urgently necessary, with some “dangerously low” types in the offer, said the NYBC in a press release at that moment.
“We understand the critical nature of our services and the health of our communities remains our maximum priority,” said the Blood Center in Wednesday’s declaration. “We remain in direct communication with our hospital partners and we are implementing solutions to help restore services and satisfy orders”.
It is not yet known who was behind the computer attack and no large group of Ransomware has still claimed the credit for the intrusion. It is also not clear whether the patient data have been accessible following the attack or if the NYBC has received a demand for redemption. NYBC did not immediately answer Techcrunch questions.
