Case Study: The Ottawa Hospital achieves ransomware resilience and rapid recovery with Infosec

The Ottawa Hospital - Customer Case Study

The Ottawa Hospital, a 1,117‑bed public university teaching hospital serving 1.3 million people, was hit in March 2016 when four staff clicked a phishing email that deployed the WinPlock ransomware and encrypted those devices. The hospital wiped and re‑imaged the affected drives from recent backups, reported no patient data compromise and paid no ransom — a situation used to highlight the need for stronger anti‑phishing measures and staff training; Infosec (SecurityIQ suite) is presented as the vendor offering those solutions.

Infosec implemented its SecurityIQ training and simulation tools — AwareED for ongoing awareness courses and PhishSim for automated simulated phishing campaigns — to reinforce safe behavior and measure risk. Using Infosec’s approach, organizations can track clicks and campaign metrics, reduce click rates through repeated training, and achieve measurable outcomes like containing infections to a few machines, restoring systems from backups without paying ransom, and avoiding compromise of patient data.

The Ottawa Hospital

Kate Eggans

Spokeswoman