WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — After misplacing the document, Yael Hanover needed a copy of her child's birth certificate. She thought the process would be easy since she'd previously requested a copy.
"We've misplaced somebody's birth certificate at some point," Hanover said. "And I had to do it and it was super duper smooth. There was no problem...It's simple. It should be simple."
According to the Florida Department of Health's website, the request should take three to five business days. Records WPTV reviewed show Hanover has waited for her child's birth certificate for over a month. She said it's delaying her daughter from obtaining a passport and putting her healthcare insurance at risk.
"I felt helpless, which, as a Mom, is the worst thing," Hanover said. "Like we're supposed to be helping and fixing and making sure everything works and I couldn't do it at all."
The Florida Department of Health said its vital statistics department, which oversees Birth and Death Certificates, said it's dealing with a "temporary outage" in a previous email statement to WPTV.
However, various cybersecurity blogs reported the Florida DOH was hit with a ransomware attack, which exfiltrated 100 gigabytes of files from the state agency and asked for an undisclosed sum earlier this month. State law doesn't allow the organization to make any ransomware payments.
Hanover said she didn't know about the hack so she eventually called the department, who told her about the "temporary outage". She said the most frustrating part was being placed on hold while trying to connect with somebody from the agency.
"The fact that I couldn't actually speak to anyone," Hanover said. "I kept calling the office of vital statistics and I would be put on hold and then I would be then thrown back to someone else, who wasn't relevant and not actually in the office of vital statistics. I know they have a physical office. They have to have somebody answering phones.
She said she just wished somebody notified her about the hack, so she could try to get written documentation to show her insurance company.
"I had no control over the situation to fix it at all and I'm under a great deal of pressure and I couldn't find anybody to help me with the situation either."
Hanover said she emailed WPTV's Ethan Stein looking for help after reading our previous coverage on funerals being delayed from the hack. She said she was so happy to get a response from the health department after WPTV reached out on her behalf.
"Like I have been so tense and getting to the point of being angry because I'm not receiving any feedback at all," "...I almost cried because it was really nice to actually have some help and some acknowledgment because there was no accountability on the part of the agencies that were supposed to be handling this."
Hanover said she's expecting the birth certificate to get to her tomorrow. She even said the woman at the health department said her daughter's birth certificate is on her desk.
