Ransomware Recovery in 4 Hours
A phishing click encrypted a medical practice's scheduling system. We restored from monitored backups, hardened their defenses, and had them seeing patients the next day.
4 Hours
Total recovery time
$0
Ransom paid
20
Staff back to work
The Incident
Tuesday 9:47am: A front-desk administrator at a 20-employee Clearwater medical practice clicked a link in what appeared to be a patient portal notification. Within minutes, their patient scheduling and EMR interface were encrypted.
Ransomware Details:
- Variant: LockBit 3.0 (identified via ransom note)
- Encrypted: Scheduling database, patient records cache, shared drive
- Ransom demand: $50,000 in Bitcoin (48-hour deadline)
- No recent backups — last verified restore was 8 months prior
The practice was turning away patients, unable to access charts or schedule appointments. They called our emergency line at 10:12am.
Our Response
10:15am — Containment
Isolated infected workstation, blocked outbound C2 traffic at firewall, preserved forensic artifacts for insurance/law enforcement.
10:30am — Backup Verification
Identified our managed backup job (running nightly at 2am). Verified immutable snapshot from 2:07am — 8 hours before infection. Clean.
11:00am — Restoration
Restored scheduling database and shared drive to clean VM. Verified data integrity with practice administrator. No patient PHI in encrypted files.
1:45pm — Hardening & Handoff
Deployed advanced email filtering (blocks 99% of phishing), enabled EDR on all endpoints, enforced MFA, configured immutable backup retention. Staff briefed on phishing awareness.
Outcomes & Hardening
4-hour recovery — zero ransom paid
Avoided $50,000+ ransom + weeks of downtime + HIPAA breach reporting.
Zero patient data lost
All charts, schedules, and billing data restored from clean backup.
Phishing emails now blocked at 99%
Advanced filtering catches lookalike domains, spoofed senders, and malicious attachments before inbox.
Full schedule restored next day
No patient cancellations — practice ran at full capacity Wednesday morning.
Now on Managed Complete plan
24/7 monitoring, monthly phishing simulations, quarterly security reviews, immutable backups.
“We had no idea how vulnerable we were. Nessco didn't just fix the problem — they made sure it can't happen again. The peace of mind is worth every penny.”
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