A major provider of vision care in the state says it’s dealing with a ransomware attack, and won’t be paying up.
Wolfe Eye Clinic says it will be notifying approximately 500,000 current and former patients that their personal information may have been inappropriately accessed as a part of a cyber-related incident. The Clinic discovered a cyberattack on its systems in early February.
Chief Financial Officer Luke Bland states the company responded to the attack to determine just how bad the breach was. According to the news release, “The threat actors demanded a ransom, which was not paid.” The full impact of the attack was not really know until late May and the forensic investigation was completed earlier this month.
Bland says the attackers were clearly not amateurs “They have been somewhat relentless. They are a very sophisticated group but when it came down to it, Wolfe Eye Clinic, we don’t do business with criminals. We have strong data backups, due to that we did not lose patient information. Paying the ransom would not have out our patients in any better of a situation, so we were very thankful for those backups,” Bland says.
Bland says patients will be receiving a notice with information on how to protect themselves. “In that letter, there will be instructions for free credit monitoring, as well as information for a call center, an independent call center that we have set up to handle any questions they have. The phone number is included in that letter,” Bland explains. Wolfe Eye Clinic says it has not been informed of any identity theft issues as of yet. That website is here https://response.idx.us/wolfe and the toll-free number is : 1-833-909-3906
(By Ken Huge, KFJB, Marshalltown)