On life support - Navigating a complex incident in healthcare

St Vincents (SVHA) is an organization with a 180 year heritage of providing health services to Australia – with an emphasis on serving those who need it the most. Today they run a truly complex network across three states – running both public and private hospitals, as well as aged care facilities.

In late December 2023 SVHA suffered from a criminal cyber incident – creating the need for a large and high profile (and ultimately successful*) Incident Response engagement that played out over Christmas and New Years 23/24. In this talk legal partners Cheng Lim – Partner @ King Wood & Mallesons, Hamish Krebs, Exec Director of DFIR – CyberCX (IR partner) and St Vincents themselves reflect and discuss the complexity in navigating an incident touching healthcare across the state and federal systems, over the holidays.

We discuss why and how SVHAs guiding principles, collaboration and trust led to a successful outcome, what worked, what didn’t, why IR requires a holistic and collaborative team, and what they would do differently next time.

*In spite of the very real complexities, successfully kept the network running, healthcare services being provided, a diverse set of stakeholders managed & got the threat actor out.