A cyberattack on the Alabama Board of Nursing’s online licensing system has taken it offline, affecting more than 80,000 nurses, WBRC reported Sept. 16.
“Our number one priority is to protect the data of our licensees,” Honor Ingels, chief policy and communications officer for the Alabama Board of Nursing, told WBRC. “And that is the reason that keeping this system offline currently is necessary to do so until we have secured the system. We cannot promise when the online services will be restored. We can promise that we will process these paper applications as expeditiously as possible.”
The board has opened paper applications for advanced practice nurses, and as of Sept. 17 has opened paper applications to new registered nurses and licensed practical nurse graduates, and nurses already licensed in another state who want to work in Alabama.
The board warned it may not be able to issue an Alabama nursing license number until services are fully restored.
“Colleges and universities across the state of Alabama are graduating nurses, nurse practitioners… midwives… CRNAs, all of the different professions of nurses are graduating. And so any of them are going to be impacted,” Rebecca Huie, DNP, RN, interim executive director of the Alabama State Nurses Association, told the news outlet. “It’s delaying hiring across the state for many hospitals and, you know, clinics, healthcare facilities.”
Hospitals and clinics have been unable to confirm the nurse licensure status of hiring and currently employed nurses due to the outage. The Alabama Board of Nursing said employers can verify a nurse through the Nursys database, or the board’s website, which is updated daily with anyone who applied since Sept. 1.
Board staff are working to secure data, wipe compromising devices and process all new applications by hand, the board said. It said it has received reports of scams using spoofed phone numbers and forged documents to make it look like official board communications. The board emphasized it will never ask a nurse to keep an investigation secret or demand immediate payment of a fee or fine.
