Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, NY had their smooth functioning disrupted as they worked to thwart a potential cyberattack on Tuesday evening. The attempted attack interfered with the hospital’s computer systems, which made the hospital stop emergency room admissions and re-route ambulances to other hospitals as part of a temporary diversion order.

As the hospital put up its defenses and got into “recovery mode,” patients suffering strokes and heart attacks were diverted elsewhere as required by the state during an emergency of this nature.

Many reported that there was chaos in the emergency waiting room at the hospital at the time of the outage, with staff resorting to pencil-and-paper to check in new patients. Several patients reportedly ended up leaving the waiting room before being admitted as they got tired of waiting. Read more about this story on our LinkedIn page