Robotic Surgery Giant Intuitive Discloses Cyberattack

American robotic surgery giant Intuitive on Friday said it fell victim to a cyberattack that resulted in a data breach.

Intuitive develops, makes, and sells robotic products used for minimally invasive surgery, such as the da Vinci surgical and Ion endoluminal systems.

The incident, the company says, was the result of a “targeted cybersecurity phishing incident” that led to unauthorized access to certain internal business applications.

“Upon discovery, we quickly activated our incident response protocols and secured all affected applications,” the company said.

Leveraging the targeted employee’s access to the internal business administrative network, the attackers accessed customer business and contact information, employee information, and corporate data.

According to Intuitive’s incident notice, the attack did not impact its operations, nor its ability to support its customers.

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“Our robotic systems have their own security protocols and operate independently of our internal business network,” it said.

The company also noted that the attackers did not access the networks supporting its manufacturing operations and its da Vinci and Ion platforms and digital products, which are separate from the internal IT business applications network.

“Hospital customer networks remain separate from Intuitive networks and are secured and managed by customers’ IT teams, therefore they are also unaffected,” Intuitive said.

The company says the incident should not have a material impact on its business or financial results, that the attack has been fully contained, and that the appropriate data privacy regulators are being notified.

What Intuitive did not share was a timeline of the attack, who was responsible for it, and how many individuals might have been affected by the data breach.

SecurityWeek has emailed Intuitive for additional information on the incident and will update this article if the company responds.

Originally published by SecurityWeek

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