Ohio’s Kettering Health system facing widespread outages after cyberattack

A cyberattack has disrupted hospitals and medical facilities in Ohio that are run by Kettering Health. 

A spokesperson told Recorded Future News that the nonprofit hospital network is “currently experiencing a cybersecurity incident resulting from unauthorized access.”

In a message on its website and on social media, the network said the incident began on Tuesday morning and caused a system-wide technology outage that limited workers’ ability to access certain patient care systems. 

“We have taken steps to contain and mitigate this activity and are actively investigating and monitoring the situation. We will continue to provide updates as appropriate,” the spokesperson added. 

Elective inpatient and outpatient procedures at Kettering Health facilities have been canceled for Tuesday and will be rescheduled. The hospital network’s call center is also down as a result of the attack. 

Kettering Health said it has procedures in place to handle these types of situations. All emergency rooms and clinics are still open and seeing patients. 

The spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether the hospital network is dealing with a ransomware attack. 

CNN reported that a ransom note found by the hospital network’s IT workers allegedly came from the Interlock ransomware gang — which caused alarm last month after shutting down the network of dialysis treatment company DaVita. The group also previously attacked the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and its El Paso counterpart.

Kettering Health, which bills itself as a “faith based” Seventh Day Adventist system, runs 14 medical centers and dozens of clinics primarily in the Dayton area — managing nearly 400,000 emergency room visits in 2023 alone. 

Previous attacks on healthcare networks have caused significant issues for nurses and doctors, limiting access to critical systems that track medications, medical history and more. 

A similar cyberattack took down a large Maryland healthcare network in January and Microsoft warned in March that hospitals will need to spend millions more to better protect critical systems necessary for patient care.