Mr. Riggi said that hospitals should prepare for three to four weeks of downtime in the event of a cyberattack and have a plan to send critical patients to nearby hospitals. The FBI has begun to treat cyberattacks on hospitals as threat-to-life crimes, meaning that they can begin to use more offensive tactics to disrupt ransomware groups.
The FBI recently took down Qakbot, a botnet network that enabled the attack on Culver City, Calif.-based Prospect Medical Group.
“We can’t defend our way out of this problem, just like we can’t arrest our way out of terrorism,” Mr. Riggi said.
