World News – FI – The hacked Finnish therapy business collapses

Vastaamo, the Finland-based private psychotherapy practice that hushed up a cyber attack on its medical record system in 2018 and then saw its patients blackmailed directly by cyber criminals, is with its services to be taken over by medical services company Verve , gone bankrupt

The company became known around the world after the blackmail attack in October 2020 in which cyber criminals threatened to lose personal data if the patients did not pay a Bitcoin ransom of € 200

It later emerged that the company’s former owner, Ville Tapio, who sold Vastaamo to an investment company in 2019, may have been aware of the 2018 cyber attack but did not disclose it during the initial investigation by the Finnish authorities, assets of Tapio and his family totaled 10 million EUR confiscated

The firm was later put into liquidation when trying to continue business However, “despite persistent attempts” this was not possible, and the liquidator Lassi Nyyssönen of the law firm Fenno has now filed for bankruptcy with the Helsinki District Court

In a statement, Vastaamo officials said the high one-time costs and uncertainties caused by the cyberattack, along with handling the breach, put such a strain on the company’s finances that it was no longer possible to continue

“It is very unfortunate that it was not possible to avoid Vastaamo’s bankruptcy,” said Nyyssönen. “However, it is important that the sale of the business opens up a solution for Vastaamo’s customers and qualified staff with which they can continue their therapy and treatment with confidence ”

Nyyssönen added that the transfer of Vastaamo’s staff to Verve would provide a “stable framework” for his therapists and psychiatrists to continue their work

The legal investigation into the data protection breach continues after it became known in late January 2021 that the stolen database appeared to have been republished on the internet, while the company deeply regretted the circumstances of this particular incident, although little did so for the patients who were blackmailed will be comforting

Vastaamo is not the first company to collapse after a cyber attack turns out to be too devastating to overcome In 2020, the foreign exchange company Travelex came to a standstill after a ransomware attack by Sodinokibi Officer Mikko Hyppönen

“It’s actually very rare for companies to fail as a result of a data breach, no matter how serious the breach was,” he said,

“Companies like Ashley Madison and Equifax, which have suffered major violations in the past, have both recovered, and even SolarWinds seems to be recovering. But in general, companies survive being hacked

“C-level executives may be faced with the ax, but it’s more than likely that companies will recover, and at some point, sales and stock values ​​will rise again. Clinical organizations like Vastaamo rely heavily on the trust of their patients If that trust is broken, it may have been too difficult to recover in this particular instance ”

This e-guide explores the links between ransomware attacks, data breaches and identity theft. First, Nicholas Fearn explores the double blackmail phenomenon and gives some inside advice on how to stop it as we examine the top five ways how data backups can protect against ransomware in the first place

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