2019-01-25T10:41:49+00:00

Sunnylake deal with the attack? When Hackers Turn to Blackmail

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Sunnylake deal with the attack? When Hackers Turn to Blackmail

Sunnylake deal with the attack?  When Hackers Turn to Blackmail

Three commentators offer exper t advice.

 

by Caroline Eisenmann

Reprint  R0910B

are at stake when extortionists shut down a hospital’s electronic medical records system.

ASE  S TUDY

When Hackers Turn to blackamail

 security sucks, the message  read. But we can help u. for 100K cash well insure your little hospital dont suffer any disasters.

“Ridiculous,” Paul Layman said to himself, deleting the  e-mail. “The  things  people  try  to get away with on the internet!”

Paul,  the  CEO of  Sunnylake Hospital, had been  leisurely  checking  his inbox  on a Friday afternoon when  he found  the  illiterate e-mail from an unknown sender. He’d come to Sunny- lake  five years  earlier  with a vision  of intro- ducing  cutting-edge technology to the small hospital. Paul  was  convinced that Sunnylake could grow only if it shook off outdated habits and procedures, and that switching  from paper records  to  electronic medical  records  (EMRs) would  improve the quality of  care  for  the hospital’s  patients. After a careful  search  Paul had hired  an earnest young  man  named Jacob Dale to be Sunnylake’s director of IT, and  the

two had worked  to execute  his vision.

The success of the EMR initiative had trans- formed Sunnylake from  a backwater commu- nity care  center to a  role  model  for  small hospitals everywhere. The entire medical staff  now  used  electronic readers to  open patients’ files. Many  of  the doctors had  ini- tially resisted the  change,   fearing   that the new  technology would  divert attention from patients’ signs and symptoms. As time passed, though, even  the most devoted of  the old school  had  been  forced  to admit that EMRs had   increased  efficiency—for   example, by automatically checking  for medication errors and drug interactions.

The shining  success had turned Paul’s fledg- ling IT department into  a valued  part of the hospital. The CEO considered EMRs to be his legacy—one  that would  serve  the  institution well for years to come.

The  implied  threat in  the  e-mail  provoked

no anxiety in Paul. He had great faith in Jacob,

HBRs cases, which are fictional, present common managerial dilemmas and offer concrete solutions from experts.

aroline Eisenmann is a former intern at HBR.

whose  custom-tailored  shirts and  Vandyke beard  belied  his aggressive  energy.  While the system was  under development, Paul  had repeatedly insisted  that patients’ privacy  was critical. Jacob  had  calmly  and  exhaustively explained that making  records  digital  would also  make  them   more  secure.  Nevertheless, Paul   had   been   nervous   when   the system went  live, but  the  past  three years  had  qui- eted his doubts. Even  though he  knew  that no  computer  system   was  perfect, he  felt confident that the network was  not in  real danger—especially  not  from  an  extortionist who hadn’t  mastered basic typing skills.

He forgot  about the  matter over the  week- end.  But  at 8:00  on  Monday   morning he received  another e-mail from the same sender, with  a subject  line reading We warned u. The message field was blank.

The  most difficult day  of  Paul  Layman’s career  was about to begin.

Access Denied

“We’ve got a patient going into  surgery!” the doctor  barked. “I need those records now!”

The intern he was shouting at barely looked up  from  the  device  in her  hands.  She’d been there only  a week,  the doctor thought, and already  she  was  proving  her  incompetence. He pulled  the EMR reader away from her and impatiently entered his access code. The screen flashed Access denied.

“What is this?” he growled. “I just looked  at this patient’s files yesterday!”

IT had designed  the network so that records could be accessed  only by the  doctors,  nurses, and  administrators who  needed them. Today, apparently, something had gone dreadfully wrong.  The  intern stood,  arms  akimbo,  shak- ing her  head.  Resisting  the  urge  to  bang  the device   against   a  table, the   doctor   stormed down the hall to the IT department. He barely noticed the  cluster  of worried-looking nurses at  their  station, or  the  empty medication carts  that should   have  been  making   their morning rounds.

At the heart of the department he happened on  an  unusual scene.  A group  of disgruntled doctors  had  gathered outside  a glass-enclosed room  in which  several  servers  were  humming on racks. Inside the room a few IT guys labored frantically. As the doctor  drew nearer, he could see that each of his colleagues carried  a device flashing the same message: Access denied.

Records for Ransom

Minutes later, Jacob was in Paul’s office when the  third  e-mail  arrived.  In  complete silence the two stared at Paul’s  computer screen. We bet u want your stuff back. probly shud have protected  it better. for the small  price of 100K well make this go away.

“What the  hell  is  going  on?”  Paul   de- manded. “I’ve got doctors  rioting  in the halls.” “This is some  kind  of system-wide  ransom- ware,” Jacob muttered. “Instead  of holding  up a couple  of people  for 50 bucks  a pop, these guys are  holding  up  the  whole  organization. They want  $100,000  for the  decryption tool.” His entire team  was at work trying  to restore the  system.  The  programming that  normally allowed  only  selective  access  to  records  had been  altered to  allow  no  access  at all. Even

the system administrators were shut out. “How did they get into our system?”

“Maybe   through an  individual  user’s  ma- chine,”  Jacob  replied.  “Someone  here   might have  thought he  was  downloading antivirus software—or updating an existing application.” “One  idiot  on  our  staff  could  have  caused this entire mess?” Paul  realized in a sickening instant that Sunnylake’s  IT  department was simply not big enough or sophisticated enough to  handle such  a  devastating problem. Over the past three years  technology security had advanced  significantly,   but  somehow Sunny- lake  had  not  kept  up. Only  days earlier  Paul had been  confident that the  system  was virtu- ally  impossible   to  infiltrate. Now  he  had  to face the horrifying reality  that it had been  too

weak all along.

Complete records  were  backed  up  on  the network, so patient information wouldn’t  be utterly lost.  But  Sunnylake currently had  no way of delivering those records  to doctors  who urgently needed them   for  patient care.  The hospital was about to come to a standstill.

“This is —” Paul paused, at a loss for words. “Really bad. Really, really  bad.” He looked  at Jacob.

The  IT director’s  eyes  had  narrowed, and his  expression   was  ferocious.  “What kind  of slime hacks  a hospital?” he demanded of the screen. “Don’t they care about hurting sick people?  You think  you’ve seen  the  worst, but these  people  get lower all the time.”

“From  what I’ve heard,  hackers   don’t  ex- actly subscribe to a moral code,” Paul said, suppressing an  urge  to shout  at Jacob. “They

must  have  realized that our  dependence on these  records  makes  us particularly vulnera- ble. If you take down  a normal site for a few hours, the company probably loses money. Maybe  even  a lot  of money.  But  if you  take records  away from  a hospital, the  staff might end  up hurting the  patients it works so hard to protect. This isn’t just a question of money anymore. We have human lives at stake.”

“My  people   are  fighting   this  with  every- thing  we’ve got,” Jacob responded defensively. “Given  enough time, we can  regain  control of the system. Then  we’ll  upgrade security to  make  sure  nothing like this  ever  happens again.  We’ll install  a network-based infection detection system. From  now on, just warding off intruders isn’t enough.”

“The  question is, When  can  we win?” Paul said quietly,  holding  down  his frustration. “We can’t go without records much longer.”

“This  is the  digital  equivalent of  hand- to-hand  combat,” Jacob replied. “We know the system  better than  these  people  do, but  they have the advantage of surprise. I just can’t tell you  when  we’re  going  to  win.  There  isn’t  a quick fix for a problem like this.”

Paul  nodded toward   the  screen.  “They’ve offered  us a quick fix,” he said.

“You’re  not   seriously   considering  paying these guys, are  you?” Jacob  asked  incredu- lously. “If we pay once, we’ll be a target forever. Don’t do it. It’s not right. We can beat  these guys, Paul. Just give me some more time.”

A Ticking Bomb

“Paul, we need to make this go away,” said Lisa Mankins,  Sunnylake’s head  legal counsel.  Her hair  was pulled  back  smoothly, and  she  was dressed  as usual  in  an  austere pantsuit, but Lisa looked as if she’d just undergone hours of torture.

After the hackers’ latest  e-mail, IT had man- aged to restore the  system  twice, only to have it  crash   minutes  later.   Despite   the   depart- ment’s best  efforts,  Jacob explained, the  hack- ers kept regaining access. Most of the staff was beginning to  look  emotionally drained. The hospital had ordered all doctors  to write paper nursing  orders  and  prescriptions for the  time being.  The  younger doctors,  who’d  always  re- lied  on  EMRs, were  baffled  by  the  concept. Even  some  of  the  older  ones  had  forgotten how  to scratch out “500  mg  Amoxicillin” legibly.

Paul  had  called  Lisa into  his office  to  talk about damage control.

“Our legal exposure in this kind of situation is mind-boggling,” she  said. “The  longer  this goes on, the bigger the risk. Literally every sec- ond  is a liability.  Doctors  are  resorting to old paper  records  for  the  most  urgent cases, but those  records  are  way out  of date.  Earlier  this afternoon we treated a patient with  medicine he  was  allergic  to.  Luckily,  his  reaction was mild—but we may not be so lucky next time.”

Lisa paced  back and  forth  in front  of Paul’s desk. “We have to assess our options.  It doesn’t look  to  me  like  IT can  fix this  problem fast enough—if at all.”

“The way Jacob explained it to me, IT needs a certain amount of time  to  regain  control,” Paul said. He had tried all morning to preserve his confidence in Jacob’s ability, but  it was be- ginning  to fade. Each time  the  system  was re- stored, hope had soared  in Paul’s chest, only to crash again  when  Access denied reappeared on every screen.

“We don’t have that time,” Lisa insisted. “You know  that.” After  a  moment of  silence  she spoke again, her face tight. “We have a budget for this kind of thing, you know. An acceptable- loss budget. We have  insurance that covers IT risk and the money  to pay these guys. Malprac- tice  suits  could  cost this  hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars  in legal  fees alone—and possibly millions  in damages. A hundred thou- sand bucks pales alongside the losses we might face if we wait this out. I think  it’s practical— even moral—to pay the ransom. The longer we wait,  the  more  we  risk  seriously  hurting our patients and ourselves.”

“I don’t like the  idea,” Paul  said. “Not  at all. It’s unprincipled to reward  extortion. It would just  encourage these  people,  and  maybe  lead to other attacks on other hospitals.” He paused. “But it might be all we’ve got.”

Lisa had barely  left his office before  George

Knudsen, the chief of staff, stormed in.

“When  are  you  going  to  fix this?”  he  de- manded. “Do  you  have  any  idea  what this will do to our reputation if some newshound gets  wind  of it?” George  was a grizzled  and intimidating fixture  at Sunnylake. He’d been there for years when  Paul  arrived,  and  might well outlast him.  The  two had  butted heads over the  introduction of EMRs, but  had  been cordial since the initiative’s success. George looked anything but cordial now.

our legal exposure in this kind of situation is mind-boggling,” she said. “Literally every second is a liability.”

“Everyone  is working  as hard  as possible,” Paul replied. “It’s been tough  for all of us.”

“I don’t think you  know  how  difficult it’s been,”  George   said  angrily.  “You  wouldn’t know  that unless  you  had  to  treat patients while  wondering whether you  were  actually doing  them  harm.  You wouldn’t  know  that unless  you were  afraid  of breaking your oath just because  some young computer geek thought his system  was a whole  lot  stronger than  it actually  is.”

“George,  you  know  how  good  the elec- tronic  system has been  for this hospital,” Paul retorted, alarmed by  the   older   man’s  fury. “You admitted it yourself.”

“I didn’t  know  what kind  of cost  we were going to pay!” George  roared. “You’re making your entire staff look incompetent—or worse! Paper  might  have  been  slow, but  it was reli- able. If you don’t fix this soon, Paul, I’m never touching one  of  those  damn   devices  again. And  I know  plenty  of others  here  who  will feel the same way.” He stalked  out.

  • • •

Paul  lay on  his back  on  the  sofa in the  staff lounge, staring  up at the half-lit ceiling. It was

1:00 am. The IT team  was still in the hospital, waging  cyberwar with  the  unseen adversary. The pattern of brief victory followed by defeat had continued into  the  night.  Jacob had tried every online  decrypter he could find; his team

Paul clenched his eyes shut. He kept  seeing cinematic images  of Allied code breakers bat- tling  the  Germans’  Enigma  machine. Sunny- lake’s situation felt every bit as urgent. Try as he  might,  he  couldn’t  clear  his mind  and  let himself  fall asleep.  Crushing  guilt, a sense  of responsibility for all that had passed that day, pressed  down on his chest.

Even  after   three years  of  success,  during which the staff had almost  without exception come  to  appreciate the  efficiency  of  EMRs, Paul  could  clearly  remember how  hard  he’d had  to fight to get the system installed and accepted. Unless  he  could  resolve  this  crisis quickly, he would  lose all the  ground he had won. The  doctors  at the  hospital had  been a  stubborn, resistant lot  at the  outset, and George   Knudsen   wasn’t  the   only  one  who would  snap  into  I-told-you-so mode.  It might be nearly  impossible  to get them  to trust  the system—or  him—again.

If he  paid  the hackers—just this once— Sunnylake could  make  security  the  number one  priority   and  ensure that nothing like this ever  happened again.  Paul  rolled  over, sighing.  Was  he  actually   considering paying extortion money  to these  criminals?

 

 

How should Sunnylake deal with the

attack? Three commentators offer expert advice.

 

was fanned out  across  the  hospital, scanning

computers for leads.

See

Case Commentary

 

 

Case Commentar y

 

by Per Gullestrup

 

How should Sunnylake deal with the attack?

The first step should be to hire an emotionally neutral negotiator who can open a dialogue with the hackers.

Distasteful as it may  sound,  I would  suggest that Sunnylake Hospital go ahead and pay the ransom demanded by the  extortionists. (This assumes, of course, that the  threat is real and that there is a verifiable risk to patient health.) That may well be the only way that Paul Lay- man can keep Sunnylake’s patients from harm and  avoid  the  massive  liability  risk that Lisa Mankins, the head counsel, so fears.

Why would  I recommend this? As a CEO, I had  to  deal  with  an  analogous situation in  November 2008,  when  Somali  pirates   in the  Gulf of Aden  attacked a $15 million  ship belonging to  the  Clipper  Group.  The  pirates held its 13 crew members hostage for 71 days. I led the  emergency response team  that was charged with  ensuring the  safety  of the  ship and crew.

Dealing with extortion is not part of a CEO’s job  description.  In  our   case,  the   criminals held  all  the  cards.  During   the  showdown  I learned that Somali  piracy  is a well-run  busi- ness  that includes  a number of actors  and investors. Though the pirates can make life unpleasant for the  hostages,  harming them  is out  of the  question—that would  be death to the pirates’ business model.

The  pirates  knew  that time was  on  their side. If we chose not to pay, they would simply hang on to the ship and crew; their well-honed system  makes  it easy to  continually resupply the  ship. (Although Danish  law prohibits pay- ing  ransom to  terrorists, there is nothing to prevent a shipowner from paying pirates.)

No  CEO can  hold  out  indefinitely against constant hammering by desperate relatives, an anxious  press, and demanding politicians—it’s simply not  sustainable. In the  end, we had no choice but to pay the millions of dollars the pi- rates demanded. (Insurance covered  the cost.)

In Paul’s case, the  first and most important step  should  be  to  hire  a  good,  emotionally neutral negotiator who  can  open  a dialogue with the hackers and keep them involved in conversation, so that they  will be unlikely  to do even more  mischief.

As the  process  moves forward,  the  negotia- tor  can  pass  information  between  the   two sides,  while  Jacob  Dale’s IT team   works  on getting the system running and then  beefs up the  security  and  emergency plans  it  should have  had  in  the  first  place.  Meanwhile, the police and forensic  specialists  can try to track down  the  criminals  and  put  a stop  to  their enterprise.

Once   negotiations  are   in   play,   every- thing  turns  into  a chess game. The negotia- tor  and  the  emergency team  can  work  out terms   and   logistics.  When   an   agreement has  been   reached, the   money   is  dropped and the  whole  episode  is over.

Another question is, What about the media? Chances  are  good  that reporters will  some- how  find  out  about what has  happened at Sunnylake. In  our  case,  we  decided  to  deal with  the  media  very directly  in order  to help raise  awareness of  the  threat that Somali pirates  pose.

If shipowners come  to  understand the  pi- rates’ business  proposition and  are  ready  to do the  hard  negotiation necessary,  they  will be  much   better  equipped to  deal  with  the threat. During   the   negotiation  process,  we learned a great deal about where  the ransom money  goes and  how it is used—and the  au- thorities are  now  putting that information to good use.

 

Per Gullestrup ([email protected]) is the presi- dent and  CEO of Clipper Projects in Copenhagen.

Case Commentar y

by Richard L. Nolan

When Hackers Turn to Blackmail  HBR CASE  STUDY

How should Sunnylake deal with the attack?

Paul needs to provide full disclosure to his various constituents: employees, board, patients, and the public.

This case is an example of the kind of attack to which  every  organization, small  or  large,  is now vulnerable. All organizations depend on technology; none are immune to the hordes of people  around the  world who seek to disrupt their  operations—sometimes just  for the  fun of it and  frequently for malicious  reasons  or personal gain.

This means  that the CEO and the board  are responsible for “good  business  judgment” in guarding against  the threat. Paul’s first mistake was to dismiss the original  e-mail message. All IT threats should  be  taken seriously;  had  he had  his  wits  about him,  he  would  have  let Jacob Dale know about it immediately. No IT system is “bulletproof.”

Moreover, organizations  need   a  plan   for when  they  are  unsure of the  extent to which their  systems have been compromised. Sunny- lake should  have  had  a workable, fully tested backup  system to ensure uninterrupted  pa- tient service  and  protect  everyone affected. Doctors  and  nurses  are  trained to  diagnose, problem solve,  and  dynamically treat  their patients. IT  systems facilitate, but  are  not substitutes for,  patient treatment. The  fact that the hospital did not have up-to-date secu- rity  software   installed, or  a  reliable   security outsourcer and  an emergency plan  in place, is inexcusable.

As bad  as it  seems,  this  crisis is easier  to deal with  than  other, vaguer  threats (such  as robotlike software   programs that  randomly alternate between dormancy and sabotage or stealing   customer data), because   Sunnylake knows there has been  an intrusion: Someone seems to have changed the access security.

So what should  Paul, the CEO, do? First, he had  better get  off that sofa and  give up  the vain hope  that IT can restore the  system  and get  the  hospital running again.  When  hospi- tals in CareGroup, a team  of health-care pro-

fessionals   in  eastern  Massachusetts, experi- enced  a  similar  situation in  2002,  the  CEO, the CIO, doctors, nurses, and the support staff began  operating just as they had in the 1970s, before  their  integrated EMR system  was  in- stalled.  The  professionals who  remembered what that was like coached  those who  had always depended on computers. As John Halamka, the  CIO, told  his board, “The good news is that health care did not suffer.”

Paul  should  also be in high communication mode  with  all of his constituents. He  should understand that in today’s networked environ- ment  there are  absolutely no  secrets.  Any IT breach forces  an  organization to ask, How much  should  we disclose  about this threat? In this situation Paul needs  to provide  full dis- closure  to his various  constituents: employees, board, patients, and the public.

In  no  way should  he  acquiesce  to  the  de- mands  of the  extortionists. There  is no guar- antee that  they   haven’t   embedded  further corruption in the  system.  The  code  needs  to be  examined line  by  line  and  thoroughly cleansed.   The  hospital’s  network  infrastruc- ture  and  other IT systems  must  be analyzed for possible corruption and protected with updated security  software.

Finally, Paul needs to face up to the fact that he may lose his job. After all, he is responsible for all the  strategic resources of the  hospital, including IT. The  board  should  also  be  held accountable for the lack of strategic oversight.

Sunnylake Hospital’s case offers an advance warning about a very serious  emerging prob- lem for all chief executives and their  boards.

 

Richard L. Nolan ([email protected]) holds the Philip M. Condit Chair at the University of Washing- ton’s Foster School of Business. He is a coauthor, with Robert D. Austin and Shannon O’Donnell, of Adventures of an IT Leader (Harvard Business Press, 2009).

 

 

How should Sunnylake deal with the attack?

IT needs to run a malware scan on every workstation in the hospital.

If you’ve festooned the windows and doors of your network with garlic, hung up mirrors  and crucifixes, and  splashed  everything with  holy water  in the  form  of firewalls, antivirus soft- ware, and  so on, you’ll probably be safe from vampires—hackers  or  malware. But  in  this case, preparations for a security  breach were lacking,  and  some  gumball—possibly  some- one  shopping online   from  a  computer con- nected to the network—may have let the vam- pire in.

Unfortunately, data   security  is  an  after- thought in many  hospitals. Recently  I walked past a  hospital’s  information kiosk,  which was  supposed to  be  staffed  by  a  volunteer. The  computer was on, the  screen  was lit up, but  nobody  was around—a gross violation of U.S. law protecting patient privacy.

At Sunnylake the  system  keeps crashing  be- cause  the  attackers find  a new  way  in  every time  a fix happens. This may  be because  the malware—the evil  program that  facilitated the  breach in  the  first  place—has  relayed  a message   back   to  the   hackers,   letting  them know what Jacob and his team  are doing.

If Paul had let the  IT people  know the  mo- ment   the   first  nasty   message   arrived,   they could  have  taken the  system  off the  internet immediately, ensuring that a rogue  program related to the  attack couldn’t  get in from out- side. This would  also have  blocked  any  back doors the hackers  had created.

Next, they should have verified that the bad guys  had  actually   gained  access  to  the  net- work.  It’s  not  unusual for  an  extortionist to send  a threatening message  in hopes  of scar- ing the  recipient into  a payoff. Jacob and  his team should  have  checked  the system logs to see  if changes  had  occurred. If they had reacted  immediately, they   could  have   fore- stalled  the  second  e-mail  or additional pene- trations.

How  can  IT  fix the  network? First, the

system  administrators need  to  regain  their

passwords  and  recover  control. At the  risk of getting technical, this  means  shutting down servers, performing a secure  delete  on all the server  disks by deleting and  overwriting with random data, restoring the  servers  and  the data, and  making  sure  the  security  programs are fully updated and operational. IT needs to run  a malware scan  on  every  workstation in the  hospital, in  case  the  attack came  via an employee computer. Though  labor-intensive, this scan is critically important.

What about the  extortionists? The  e-mail messages  offer  some  tantalizing hints  as  to their  identity. The use of the abbreviation “u” for “you” suggests a young person  or a foreign national with  poor  English  skills or  an  ama- teur   who   downloaded  the   attack  program from  the  internet. It’s  also  possible  that the bad guys are quite intelligent—and it’s always safer to overestimate hackers’ skills. They may not  even  be “outsiders.” A vengeful  employee or  patient who  happens to  pass  by an  unat- tended workstation can do plenty  of damage. Before  reconnecting to  the  internet, Sunny- lake should watch what happens for 24 hours. If the  attackers are  insiders  who  retained ac- cess to the system, they may try to get in again. Even  if Paul  hires  a  security consultant, which  is a step  I would  recommend, it’s  un- likely that the hospital will find the attackers. Still, the consultant can  help  build  a profile of  the  attackers, improve security,  and  train key personnel, so that Sunnylake can protect

itself in the future.

 

P             LQ WKH FRXUVH


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