Cornwall Community Hospital hit by cyber-attack

CORNWALL, Ont. – Last week, Cornwall Community Hospital (CCH) identified a network issue which an investigation has revealed to be a cyber incident. On its website, the hospital said it has retained external cyber experts to work with its technical team to resolve the issue. It has also informed its regional stakeholders, including law enforcement and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario.

The Cornwall Community Hospital serves a catchment area in Eastern Ontario of over 110,000 people. It has 175 beds and a workforce of 1,200 staff and 180 physicians working in both acute care and community-based services.

The hospital said its clinical electronic health record has not been impacted, but cautioned the public that “residents may experience some delays to scheduled or non-urgent care.”

It added that, “Ongoing network issues due to the cyber incident are also impacting user access to MyChart,” the hospital’s patient portal.

It said the public can visit the CCH website (www.cornwallhospital.ca) or the hospital’s social media channels to stay up to date on the ongoing incident.

The cyber-attack on the Cornwall Community Hospital was one of a series of intrusions in the past few weeks, including the Prime Minister’s Office website and the Senate of Canada’s website.

A pro-Russian hacking group took credit for the attacks on the PMO’s web site and the Senate as Canada hosted a visit by Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

“It’s not uncommon for Russian hackers to target countries as they are showing their steadfast support for Ukraine … so the timing isn’t surprising,” Trudeau said during a joint news conference with Shmyhal.

“But in case anyone was wondering, Russia being able to bring down an official government of Canada web page for a few hours is in no way going to dissuade us from our unshakable support of Ukraine.”

The agency that oversees cybersecurity for the federal government says it’s investigating but downplayed the severity of the attack.