By Jeff Wardon, Jr., Assistant Editor

A cyberattack was detected at Lurie Children’s Hospital on January 31, 2024, due to evidence of suspicious activity. Their investigation found that cybercriminals accessed their systems between January 26 and 31, 2024.  

This prompted the organization to take their systems offline to protect their sensitive information. They then confirmed their network was accessed by a known criminal threat actor. 

It was later confirmed to be a ransomware attack in an updated notice from Lurie Children’s, though the organization says they did not pay the ransom.  

“Experts have advised that making a payment to cybercriminals does not guarantee the deletion or retrieval of data that has been taken,” Lurie Children’s says in their notice. “Once our investigation team identified an amount of data that was impacted by the cybercriminals, we worked closely with law enforcement to retrieve that data.” 

The cyberattack ultimately affected around 792,000 individuals, according to The HIPAA Journal. 

Jeff Wardon, Jr. is the assistant editor for the facilities market.