Tag Archive for: Effect

MCCH board updated on ransomware effect on payroll | Local News

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MURRAY – The Murray-Calloway County Public Hospital Board of Trustees was updated Wednesday on the status of a ransomware attack that has left the hospital without access to its payroll information.

MCCH CEO Jerry Penner said employees will be paid on schedule today, but the paychecks will be based on a pay period in November because the hospital cannot currently access its hourly pay records. Penner said the hospital learned on Dec. 13 about a ransomware attack on Ultimate Kronos Group, a human resources management company with which MCCH contracts. According to a report Penner cited from Becker’s Hospital Review, the ransomware attack reportedly affected Kronos’ Private Cloud software platform that many hospitals, health care providers and other companies across the country use for scheduling, timekeeping, payroll and human resources. The attack occurred on Dec. 11, and the company said in a Dec. 13 blog post that it is working to fix the problem. However, Kronos said it could take several weeks to restore services.

“This ties into our payroll and finances with our human resources accounting for people signing off on overtime and their regular time, and Kronos unfortunately had a ransomware attack,” Penner said. “So it brought us all to our knees on this particular aspect because last time I checked, I’ve got about 1,000 employees we’ve got to pay (Thursday). So we had about 10 days to figure this out, how we pay everybody. The problem is, all our data is in the cloud and you’ve got to figure out a way to bring that information down, but you can’t at this point because it’s all been frozen.”

Penner said there are probably 600-700 other hospitals facing the same problem. He said the fact that it affects the last paycheck of the year makes the situation even more difficult because the hospital has to figure out how to incorporate that pay period into its 2021 W-2s without even knowing how long it will be before the problem can be fixed. W-2 forms must be ready by Jan. 31, he said.

“The bottom line is … we’re going to roll back to the last pay period that we had before Thanksgiving, which was the seventh of…

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Mandatory 10-digit dialing goes into effect Sunday

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Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – It will soon be time to check how you are dialing your calls.

The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, announced last year that full 10-digit dialing must be done for all calls starting this month.

In 2020 the FCC adopted an order approving the designation of 988 as the preface for the existing National Suicide Prevention hotline.

Implementation does apply to Alaska and requires all utility providers to change from a seven-digit code to a ten-digit code.

The Commission said that also one of the reasons for changing to 10-digit local dialing is to avoid the need for people to change their telephone numbers.

If a person is calling someone Alaska, it would require 907 and then the phone number.

If an individual Dials 7-digits for a local call, a recording will play saying the call cannot be completed as dialed.

Steven Jones, Media Contact for the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, spoke on things to consider for people that have systems such as fax machines, Internet, Security, or making calls out of offices

“Make sure that those are now programmed with the 907 area code so that it does complete the call, there’s a lot of things that that people have that don’t don’t realize it, whether it be call forwarding or voicemail services,” he said. “On October 24th, you want to make sure that that takes place or the call may not go through.”

People looking to make long-distance calls will continue to dial 1, plus the area code, and then telephone number.

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Is White House Crackdown on Ransomware Having Any Effect?

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The latest edition of the ISMG Security Report features an analysis of the state of the Biden administration’s efforts to disrupt ransomware attackers.

In this report, you’ll hear (click on player beneath image to listen):

  • ISMG’s Scott Ferguson detail White House efforts to combat ransomware via geopolitical and law enforcement means, as well as by boosting the cyber resiliency of the U.S. private sector and government agencies;


  • ISMG’s Jeremy Kirk cover/detail/analyze an emergency patch from Apple, which fixes a zero-click integer overflow vulnerability in iMessage that was being exploited by Pegasus spyware;


  • Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Gould, who heads Britain’s National Police Chiefs’ Council’s cybercrime program, detail essentials for planning and executing a cybersecurity incident response plan.


The ISMG Security Report appears on this and other ISMG websites on Fridays. Don’t miss the Sept. 3 and Sept. 10 editions, which respectively discuss the latest data breach trends and ransomware attackers’ ideal targets.

Theme music for the ISMG Security Report is by Ithaca Audio under a Creative Commons license.

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Pandemic side effect: Two out of every three Indians addicted to being online, says report by computer security firm

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The COVID-19 pandemic has left two out of every three Indians addicted to being online, says a report released on August 24.

According to the 2021 Norton Cyber Safety Insights report by consumer security company NortonLifeLock, adults in India are spending 4.4 hours a day on an average in front of screens, apart from the time they spend online for work or educational purposes. The report is based on an online survey of more than 1,000 Indian adults conducted by the Harris Poll.

About eight in 10 (82 per cent) respondents said that the amount of time they spent in front of screens, in addition to the time spent for educational or work purposes, has increased significantly during the pandemic.

The survey also found that most of the online activity is done over smartphones, with 84 per cent adults surveyed saying they are spending too much time on smartphones.

Another interesting finding from the survey is the adverse effect on physical and mental health due to excessive online presence. The majority of adults (74 per cent) claimed that the amount of time they spend in front of a screen negatively impacted their physical health, while more than half (55 per cent) said it negatively impacted their mental health.

Ritesh Chopra, NortonLifeLock’s Director, India & SAARC Countries, said in a statement: “It is understandable that the pandemic has increased our dependence on screens for activities that could otherwise have been done offline. It is important for every individual, however, to find a healthy balance between their on-screen and off-screen time so that their health and, more importantly, their children’s health is not adversely impacted.”

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