Boston Scientific said in an Aug. 27 stakeholder update that “a cybersecurity incident continues to affect certain information technology systems, and the company remains in a network outage with disruption to its operations.”
The Marlborough, Mass.-based company detected the attack Aug. 25 and disclosed it to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Aug. 26, saying the incident caused a global disruption to its operations, including its ability to process and ship customer orders.
Two days later, Boston Scientific said its investigation shows no impact to the function of its implanted cardiac rhythm management devices, or CRM devices. The company also reported no disruption to those devices’ ability to transmit data and no interruption to physicians’ access to remote patient management data for CRM devices monitored before the outage began, with no evidence of increased cybersecurity risk transferring that data to EMR systems.
New remote monitoring activations remain affected, however. For new cardiac implants other than insertable cardiac monitors, new communicators cannot be activated, so device data will not transmit to remote monitoring systems until activation resumes, though programmer interrogations are unaffected.
For new insertable cardiac monitors, devices cannot pair with the patient’s remote monitoring mobile app, meaning recorded episode data will not transmit until a clinician performs an in-person interrogation using Boston Scientific’s Clinic Assistant app.
Boston Scientific said it still cannot process or ship customer orders but can accept orders electronically, including through the Global Health Exchange, and hold them in a queue for fulfillment once systems are restored. Customers can continue reaching sales representatives through normal channels.
The company is working with third-party cybersecurity experts to restore its systems and said progress is being made recovering its core business systems, though it has not set a timeline for full recovery.
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