Florida Death Certificates Were Postponed Because of the Health Department Cyberattack

Introduction

Currently one of the state's most trafficked documents, it holds great significance for families upon the death of a loved one. Health departments are now receiving death certificates in person for processing.

Although it is against the law for any official entity to pay ransom, they gave the state until Friday to pay an unidentified sum.

The Florida Department of Health issues birth certificates, death certificates, and other medical records. The funeral director at McKinney Family Funeral Home, Reginald McKinney, stated, "A burial permit is accompanied with the death certificate to have everything completed."

Since 2009, McKinney has been in charge of the funeral home industry. Prior to the incident, he informed the media that all death-related information was filed online.
Currently, funeral directors must manually fill out a death certificate.

"And the extra step we have to take now is that we need to drive this certificate to the health department and literally present them the tangible paper so they can actually submit the death certificate in order to get it finalized and filed. It was done electronically prior to the cyberattack, according to McKinney.

Stolen Data by Hackers

Death certificates are required for many different things, including retirement payments, social security, insurance claims, probating estates, and veteran's benefits.

According to McKinney, death certificates are also necessary to determine the last burial place of a loved one.

"When we take someone to the cemetery, for example, we need a burial permit. This does not always mean the death certificate is finished, but we would have needed to get in touch with the signing physician to get his approval to sign the death certificate before that person could be cremated or buried in a cemetery," he explained.

It's possible that Floridians will have to wait longer to receive certified birth certificates.

"And that's the worry—how far can they go with all of that data they've stolen in a breach like this?" According to Berkeley Varitronics CEO Scott Schober.

According to Schober, hackers might have accessed the state system using anything as basic as a phishing email, which would have had disastrous effects on anyone who hadn't taken precautions to safeguard their credit information.

"Sadly, people who don't have their credit frozen and who don't routinely check their statements, as some of it probably contains social security numbers and they think there might be some billing information," he stated.

Precautions

In an effort to deter these kinds of intrusions, cyber security expert Scott Schober stated he agreed with Florida's law that prohibits government institutions from paying a ransom to have their data returned.