Cyberattack hits Swedish cloud provider Advania, healthcare services impacted

Advania, a Nordic information technology provider serving the public and private sectors, has suffered a cybersecurity incident affecting at least 60 of its customers in Sweden. Local media reports that several healthcare centers were exposed to the attack.

The company admitted a “security incident” in its public statement.

“During the afternoon of Tuesday, February 6th, we discovered an anomaly in a limited part of our customer environment. As we suspected that this could be a security incident, we isolated the customer environment and informed the 60 or so customers who were affected,” the statement reads.

An early investigation into the incident leaves almost no doubt that it was caused by an intrusion by an external actor. The company has isolated the affected customer environments and says they have no links to any other Advania services or customers.

“Our security systems detected the breach in time. We isolated the affected customer environment and were able to limit the consequences. Our security systems and routines have worked as planned. We have not received malicious code (such as ransomware) in the affected customer environment,” Advania said.

The company filed a police report and hopes to get everyone back to normal operations as soon as possible

However, several healthcare centers have been exposed and now are struggling with limited IT availability and keeping operations running, the Boras Tidning, a local daily newspaper, reported.

“We cannot access any medical records, perform any tests, and can only issue paper prescriptions. We are unable to admit any patients,” said Per Svensson, the operations manager at Herkules Healthcare Center in Borås, to the newspaper.