Murfreesboro Medical Clinic shut down for two weeks after a ransomware attack

Murfreesboro Medical Clinic & SurgiCenter, a Tennessee provider with around 130 clinicians across seven locations, shut down its entire operation on April 22, 2023 after a ransomware attack. Staff took the network offline to stop the attack spreading, and the clinic stayed closed for close to two weeks.

Chief executive Joey Peay said the organization would not have been able to keep fending off the attack with the clinic open. Scheduled appointments, surgeries, gastroenterology procedures and laboratory and radiology services were cancelled during the shutdown.

Reopening was staged and slipped past the clinic's initial target date. Pediatric and internal and family walk-in clinics at the Garrison Drive site resumed on May 4. Limited scheduled appointments returned on May 8, most surgeries and gastroenterology procedures on May 9, and some walk-in services on May 10, with several departments still closed.

The clinic worked with third-party cybersecurity experts and law enforcement, rebuilt its network and said it was putting enhanced security measures in place before restoring the remainder of its systems. It urged patients and employees to watch for misuse of their information but had not confirmed at that stage whether specific data had been taken. In June 2023 the clinic reported that roughly 559,000 people were affected, and reporting attributed the attack to the BianLian extortion group.