Surgeries canceled, clinics closed after University of Mississippi Medical Center hit by ransomware attack

A devastating cyberattack using ransomware hit the University of Mississippi Medical Center Thursday morning, bringing down its IT network and forcing the university to temporarily close its clinics and cancel appointments and surgeries all over the state due to the outage. 

LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, confirmed the cause of the attack to the Mississippi Free Press at a press event. Countless systems statewide remain down, with clinical operations across dozens of clinics cancelled until further notice.

“Early this morning, we sustained a cyber attack, which impacted our IT network and many of our systems, including our electronic medical records system, EPIC. We have triggered our emergency operations plan: this impacts all medical center locations,” Woodward said.

Read more at Mississippi Free Press