Clinic Chain Hires Penetration Testing Team After Legacy Medical Devices Exploited in Internal Network Breach
The Challenge
In early 2025, Northern Maple Health, a mid-sized healthcare clinic chain operating across Ontario and Manitoba, experienced a serious cybersecurity breach that exposed deep flaws in its technology infrastructure. What began as minor system slowdowns soon escalated into a major network compromise that revealed how overlooked legacy medical devices could become an organization’s greatest vulnerability.
The incident began when staff at one of the diagnostic centers noticed unusual delays in accessing patient imaging records. At first, IT personnel attributed the issue to bandwidth congestion caused by remote radiology uploads. Within days, however, the situation worsened. Some imaging systems began displaying unexplained firmware errors, and server audits revealed newly encrypted files appearing on shared drives.
The internal investigation uncovered a shocking truth. Attackers had infiltrated the network through outdated MRI and X-ray imaging equipment running obsolete operating systems that were no longer supported by vendors. These devices had remained connected to the broader clinical network due to compatibility issues with legacy imaging software.
By exploiting a known remote code execution vulnerability, the attackers gained access to administrative credentials, moved laterally across the system, and extracted sensitive patient data, including diagnostic images and physician notes. The intrusion went unnoticed for nearly three weeks, resulting in the potential exposure of more than 40,000 patient records.
The operational impact was immediate. Clinics reverted to manual record-keeping, diagnostic appointments were delayed, and care continuity was disrupted. Beyond the clinical consequences, the breach triggered mandatory reporting under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and provincial privacy legislation. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) initiated an inquiry into the incident, raising questions about the organization’s compliance posture.
Senior leadership faced intense scrutiny from the board and the public. Why were outdated devices still connected? Why had segmentation and patching strategies been deferred? The reality was common in healthcare: critical systems often outlive their intended lifespans, maintained out of operational necessity rather than choice. Yet this breach made the risk undeniable. The attackers had never targeted the cloud or billing systems. they had simply taken advantage of forgotten machines that no one thought could pose a threat.
Our Solution
Service Area: Technical Security and Testing (Legacy System and IoMT Protection)
Our team executed a comprehensive security engagement focused on containment, remediation, and future resilience. The scope included network isolation, forensic analysis, penetration testing, and architectural improvements designed to eliminate legacy device vulnerabilities.
Key Actions:
– Immediate containment: Isolated compromised network segments and implemented emergency firewall rules to prevent further lateral movement.
– Forensic response: Collected volatile and disk evidence, network logs, and traffic captures to support root cause analysis and regulatory reporting.
– Penetration testing: Conducted a full red team simulation targeting biomedical devices, clinical systems, and administrative networks to validate risks.
– Compensating controls: Applied virtual patching through intrusion prevention systems, enforced application whitelisting, and restricted unnecessary remote access.
– Network segmentation: Introduced dedicated VLANs for imaging and diagnostic devices, implemented micro-segmentation, and enforced zero-trust access controls.
– Regulatory alignment: Supported mandatory reporting under PIPEDA and provincial health privacy laws; developed compliant documentation for OPC inquiries.
– Remediation roadmap: Created a phased plan for system upgrades, vendor patch applications, and replacement of unsupported devices.
The Value
- Attack Surface Reduction: Over 90% of legacy devices were successfully isolated within secured biomedical segments.
– Detection and Response Improvement: Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) reduced from ~21 days to less than 24 hours.
– Access Control Hardening: All privileged credentials were rotated and multi-factor authentication deployed.
– Exploit Mitigation: Over 80% of lateral movement paths were eliminated.
– Regulatory Readiness: Evidence packages prepared to meet PIPEDA, PHIPA, and PHIA compliance requirements.
– Operational Stability: Diagnostic and EHR functionality fully restored under secured maintenance protocols.
Implementation Roadmap
Phase 0 – Immediate Containment (Days 0–2)
– Isolate affected segments.
– Preserve evidence and initiate 24-hour monitoring.
Phase 1 – Rapid Assessment (Days 2–7)
– Conduct network-wide penetration testing and perform full device inventory.
– Prepare preliminary reporting for regulatory bodies.
Phase 2 – Hardening and Control Implementation (Weeks 2–3)
– Deploy micro-segmentation and intrusion prevention systems.
– Enforce MFA and apply virtual patching.
Phase 3 – Validation and Policy Integration (Weeks 4–5)
– Reassess system security through targeted red team testing.
– Update cybersecurity policies and vendor contracts.
Phase 4 – Long-Term Sustainment (Weeks 6–12)
– Replace unsupported medical devices and conduct privacy tabletop exercises.
– Finalize compliance documentation and audit evidence packages.
