From PCMag, but it's certainly not the only one (I caught it on the CBS Evening News last night. I know, I'm an old soul.)

Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center has paid the ransom demanded by hackers after being under seige for more than a week.

The hospital paid 40 bitcoin ($17,000) to regain control of its computer network, Allen Stefanek, the hospital's president and CEO, said in a statement. Earlier reports put the ransom amount at about $3.4 million, but that was "false," according to Stefanek.

Staff began noticing "significant IT issues" on Friday, when the hospital declared an internal emergency. In the days since, computer-based tasks were carried out via pen and paper, hundreds of patients were diverted to nearby hospitals, and the Radiation and Oncology departments were temporarily shut down.

As I posted in a Disqus comment there...

It's time to ensure that patient information is not exposed on the Internet. I don't care if the answer is hospitals keeping their own intranet completely separate, moving data via physical device (my preference) or if we somehow come together to pay for a second, wholly physically-distinct "securenet", we've got to stop allowing companies to be so lazy with data and not hold them accountable for the poorly foresight.

The is the difference I don't think even James Comey, current head of the FBI, seems to understand when he parallels encrypted data with locked car trunks you can't open. When it's on the Internet, you've commoditized geography. Anyone who gets on the Internet, anywhere, can knock on your Internet networked data's door.

Come on, folks. It's past time to move our personal data to a better neighborhood.

Labels: encryption, hack, privacy