WEST PALM BEACH, Fla — OneBlood, a blood-donation nonprofit that supplies blood to more than 300 hospitals across the southeastern United States has been hit with a cyberattack.
OneBlood works to get lifesaving blood and "blood products" to hospitals in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. About 250 hospitals are now being asked by OneBlood to activate critical blood shortage protocol and to "remain in that status for the time being."
"This is an unprecedented scenario we're experiencing here at OneBlood," Susan Forbes, the senior vice president of corporate communications and public relations for One Blood told WPTV's Michael Hoffman. "We are utilizing all resources at our disposal to rectify the situation as quickly as possible."
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Cyberattack hits blood-donation nonprofit OneBlood
Forbes told Hoffman that OneBlood's software systems have been affected, causing them to operate at a "significantly reduced capacity."
Cyber security expert Mehran Basiratmand with Florida Atlantic University told Hoffman that the attackers are holding something over their victim in order to get some kind of payment.
"The way these attacks usually work, normally [hackers] scramble files on the computer system," Basiratmand said. "So, they break into the computer system and they scramble files. In our business, we call it encrypting files. What they do is ask for a specific amount of money, normally in the form of cryptocurrency. And what in turn they will do once that money is specifically transferred to an account, they will provide that folks can apply for the files to start descrambling."
Basiratmand said at this point whether hackers are holding a decryption key or patients' information hostage remains to be seen and that information will not be released until the investigation moves forward. However, he added that there is a silver lining.
"The damage is bad, but it's not a catastrophe," Basiratmand said. "This was not a coordinated attack on health care infrastructure nationwide, so, clearly it's regional. As much as we in Florida are impacted by this, the blast radius from a broader perspective is only within the southeastern United States."
Forbes told Hoffman that local, state and federal agencies, including the FBI, are involved in the investigation.
"It's important to know that while that is going on, it's not stopping us from operating," Forbes said. "Because our life-saving mission must prevail no matter the circumstances. We have adjusted and moved to manual processes to ensure that we can continue to operate. Our donor centers are open, our Big Red Bus blood drives are taking place, donors are here and we need that to continue."
WPTV has received statements from hospitals affected in our area, and we will continue to gather those. Below are their current statements below:
Baptist Health:
"Like many other health systems, we are experiencing delays in receiving certain blood products from OneBlood stemming from the ransomware event impacting their system. At the current time, we have sufficient blood supplies to support our hospitalized patients’ needs. In an abundance of caution, and in order to maintain enough blood supply for emergencies, we are rescheduling elective and nonemergency surgeries that may require blood products at our hospitals until the issue is resolved. Physicians are evaluating surgeries on a case-by-case basis and will communicate directly with any patients whose surgeries may need to be rescheduled. Outpatient surgeries at our ambulatory surgery centers are not affected and are proceeding as planned."
Cleveland Clinic Florida:
"We are aware that OneBlood, our supplier of blood products, is experiencing a system software outage that is impacting their ability to ship blood products to hospitals in Florida. We are closely monitoring our blood supply levels across all Cleveland Clinic Florida locations. We are operating normally, and patient care is not impacted."
