Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (ASC1773764792)
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Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of Ascension's Ransomware and lateral movement inside company's environment.
- Overview of affected data sets, including SSNs and PHI, and why they materially increase incident severity.
- How Rankiteo’s incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score.
- How this cyber incident impacts Ascension Rankiteo cyber scoring and cyber rating.
- Rankiteo’s MITRE ATT&CK correlation analysis for this incident, with associated confidence level.
Full Incident Analysis Transcript
In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Ascension breach identified under incident ID ASC1773764792.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Ascension's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ascensionorg, the number of followers: 292426, the industry type: Hospitals and Health Care and the number of employees: 65854 employees
After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 206 and after the incident was 100 with a difference of -106 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.
In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on Ascension and their customers.
On 08 May 2024, Ascension disclosed Ransomware issues under the banner "Ransomware Attack on Ascension Healthcare Network".
A ransomware attack has severely disrupted operations at Ascension, one of the largest nonprofit healthcare systems in the U.S., forcing hospitals and clinics across multiple states to divert emergency services and revert to manual record-keeping.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Electronic health records (EHR), Phone systems and Scheduling tools, and exposing Patient data exposure remains a concern, though not confirmed.
In response, teams activated the incident response plan, while recovery efforts such as Restoring systems, manual workflows implemented continue.
The case underscores how Ongoing, teams are taking away lessons such as The incident underscores the growing vulnerability of healthcare systems to cyberattacks and the urgent need for enhanced cybersecurity measures in the sector, and recommending next steps like Implement stronger cybersecurity protocols, regular vulnerability assessments, and incident response planning tailored to healthcare operations.
Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.
MITRE ATT&CK® Correlation Analysis
Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating targeted Ascension’s network, which serves 140 hospitals and Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating widespread outages suggest possible compromised credentials. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified User Execution: Malicious File (T1204.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware attack has severely disrupted operations. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating manual record-keeping implemented, suggesting prolonged access. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware...data encryption confirmed and Inhibit System Recovery (T1490) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating forcing hospitals to revert to manual record-keeping. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating patient data exposure remains a concern. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Obfuscated Files or Information (T1027) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating specific strain and threat actor remain unidentified. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Ascension Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/ascensionorg/incident/ASC1773764792
- Ascension CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/ascensionorg
- Ascension Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/asc1773764792-ascension-ransomware-march-2026/
- Ascension CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/ascensionorg/history
- Ascension CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/us-weighs-near-1-billion-wind-farm-settlement-for-totalenergies-nyt-reports/ar-AA1YPYHQ
- Rankiteo A.I CyberSecurity Rating methodology: https://www.rankiteo.com/Images/rankiteo_algo.pdf
- Rankiteo TPRM Scoring methodology: https://static.rankiteo.com/model/rankiteo_tprm_methodology.pdf