We have reported almost daily on the cyberattack on Kettering Health since it took place on May 20.

In today’s Morning Briefing, we take an in-depth look at the ongoing story and catch you up on anything you may have missed over the past weeks, including the group claiming responsibility and the progress Kettering Health is making.

If you have thoughts or feedback on this newsletter or other news tips, please let me know at [email protected].

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The newsletter should take about 3 minutes, 4 seconds to read.

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Kettering Health’s MyChart access returning this week, CEO says

Kettering Health plans by this week to restore access to the online patient portal MyChart, which has been out of commission for nearly three weeks.

• About Kettering Health: There are 14 area medical centers and more than 120 outpatient locations throughout Western Ohio, as well as Kettering Physician Network, which includes more than 700 board-certified providers.

• Progress: The hospital system has been getting certain departments and services back to being operational during its ongoing recovery. Its wider network of primary care doctors and specialists has been seeing patients on a walk-in basis.

• Back to normal: Administrators also plan to get patients’ experiences back to normal, meaning when patients call the hospital about appointments or with other questions, staff will be able to answer and provide assistance.

• What they are saying: “The goal is, by (today), we’re resuming normal operations,” said Kettering Health CEO Mike Gentry in his latest update to staff. “Now, that doesn’t mean everything’s back online, but it means from our patient and consumer standpoint, patients will be able to interact with us in a way that they are accustomed to in the past.”

• Canceled appointments: Patients have dealt with canceled appointments, delayed medical treatments and an inability to call their care teams or access MyChart. Certain patients needing emergency medical care were diverted from Kettering Health’s emergency rooms during most of this outage, but that diversion has ended.

• Team effort: More than 200 people from the Kettering Health Information Systems team, clinical team members and partners from the software company Epic worked to restore access to internal electronic health record software.

• What this means: Clinical staff can now update and access electronic health records, facilitate communication across care teams and coordinate patient care with greater speed and clarity.

Ransomware group claims it stole more than 730K of files

A ransomware group called Interlock is claiming it stole 941 gigabytes of data, which includes more than 730,000 files, from Kettering Health.

• Kettering Health statement: Last week, Gentry said a “small subset” of its data had been accessed by an unauthorized user.

• Interlock: Interlock claimed it has 732,490 files across 20,418 folders stolen from Kettering Health, posting about it on its data leak site on the dark web.

• What was stolen: The stolen files allegedly include identification cards, payment data, financial documents, clinical summaries, employee data and more.

• What does Interlock want? “They post it online to sell it,” said JP Castellanos, director of threat intelligence at Binary Defense, a cybersecurity company in northeast Ohio. In addition to trying to sell the data, the perpetrators may be trying to force Kettering Health to pay money.

• Ransom request: Since Kettering Health likely didn’t give in to a ransom request, Interlock is potentially trying to get Kettering Health to pay them by exposing some of what they have online.