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Ransomware Attack on Medstar: Ethical Position statement

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  • Najam Ul Hassan (show author details)

    Najam Ul Hassan

    University of Maryland University College, USA, United States

    0000-0003-4990-6076

    Corresponding author

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Hassan, N. U. (2018). Ransomware Attack on Medstar: Ethical Position statement. SEISENSE Journal of Management, 1(4), 29-31. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1435408

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Abstract

Medstar Health was the target of ransomware attack in 2016. The attack impacted the provision of healthcare services to the patient. Medstar opted not to pay the ransom and, instead, responded by shutting down its electronic medical record (EMR) systems and restoring the data from the backups. The paper analyzes the event, Medstar’s response and its negligent behavior that allowed the vulnerability to be exploited. The author provides an ethical position statement and recommendation to reduce the chances of any future attacks.

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Copyright (c) 2018 Najam Ul Hassan

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Published in

Vol. 1 No. 4 (2018): SEISENSE Journal of Management View Issue

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2025-112026-10

Article history

  1. ReceivedSeptember 26, 2018
  2. Published September 26, 2018

Author Biography

Najam Ul Hassan

University of Maryland University College, USA United States ORCID

The author has over two decades of IT experience and is a professional IT project management consultant at an international IT consulting firm and an adjunct associate professor of cybersecurity at a state university. He has masters in computer science, business administration, and international management and he is working on his Ph.D. in business analytics and decision sciences.

References

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Cox, J. W. (2016, March 29). MedStar Health Turns Away Patients After Likely Ransomware Cyberattack. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/medstar-health-turns-away-patients-one-day-after-cyberattack-on-its-computers/2016/03/29/252626ae-f5bc-11e5-a3ce-f06b5ba21f33_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b8eec6f84dc1

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LaPointe, J. (2016, April 7). MedStar Ransomware Attack Caused by Known Security Flaw. Health IT Security. Retrieved from https://healthitsecurity.com/news/medstar-ransomware-attack-caused-by-known-security-flaw

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MedStar Health. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.medstarhealth.org/

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Reed, T. (2016, July 6). MedStar Official on Cyberattack: 'We Chose by Design not to Pay the Ransomware'. Washington Business Journal. Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2016/07/06/medstar-official-on-ransomware-attack-we-chose-by.html

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