**CODE GREY - NSHN - ALL SITES - IT INFRASTRUCTURE LOSS**

UPDATED: MARCH 24/25 @ 4:00

Message from Tim Vine, NSHN President & CEO

“The North Shore Health Network (NSHN) is back online and actively recovering from a cyber incident that began on Wednesday March 19, 2025.

Shortly after 4:30 am on Wednesday March 19, our organization was alerted to a cyber risk. After reviewing the risk with our third-party security firm, out of an abundance of caution, NSHN networks were isolated from the larger Northeast and the eHealth Ontario networks.  NSHN also engaged additional resources from our regional partners to conduct a validation of our network and to enact a number of preventative measures at the local and regional level. The validation was complete on the evening of Sunday March 23rd.  After a 5-day blackout, by 11:35 pm on Sunday users were once again able to access networks across all sites.

During this blackout period, NSHN’s three sites (Blind River, Thessalon, & Richards Landing – Matthews) were without internet access and there was no access to the regional medical record. The outage also impacted the Huron Shores Family Health Team at all their locations. Emergency Departments remained open to the public, however, communication was shared that patients could experience longer wait times depending on their needs. The organization did experience a reduction in some services, notably, outpatient Laboratory, Medical Imaging and Nurse Practitioner appointments were postponed.

Internally, downtime procedures were activated as our teams navigated paper charting and the challenge of limited Medical Imaging and Laboratory services.

As investigations continued, it was identified that there was no loss of data or compromise of health information or private information.

Our teams will be contacting patients to reschedule any postponed outpatient appointments as soon as possible.

On behalf of NSHN, I wish to extend sincere gratitude to our patients, clients, residents, families and caregivers for your patience and treating our workers with kindness during this incident; to our regional partners who supported our technical team to bring our systems back online as quickly as possible; and to our staff, providers and volunteers for working through the adversities of the past 5 days as a team to ensure the continued provision of effective compassionate healthcare for our communities.”