What happens when a group of hospitals get hacked

On Oct. 23, 2023, five hospitals in southwestern Ontario realized they were under attack. A cybercrime group was hacking them in order to hold patient and employee information hostage. The hack resulted in all of the hospitals shutting down their systems, causing massive delays in care, backlogging tests and requiring some patients to travel for care.

Karen Howlett, an investigative reporter at The Globe, has been looking into how hackers were able to get into the hospitals’ shared IT system and steal over 250,000 patient records.

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