HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KIAH) — The Houston Center for Mental Health experienced what appears to be a ransomware attack. That attack resulted in the encryption of some employee working files, making them inaccessible to the employees. They are working to see if any of the data was compromised. The Harris Center preemptively shut down their network to prevent the spread of the attack. Have faced limited access to files and that there have been some delays to patient care. The Harris Center is taking all possible steps to continue to provide patient care uninterrupted.

See the Harris Center’s FULL STATEMENT response below:

This past Tuesday November 7th, the Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD experienced what appears to be a ransomware attack that resulted in the encryption of some employee working files, making them inaccessible to the employees. We continue to work on the analysis to determine if any data has been compromised.

The Harris Center preemptively shut down their network to prevent the spread of the attack. The practical impact of our preemptive steps is that Harris Center staff have faced limited access to files and that there have been some delays to patient care. The Harris Center is taking all possible steps to continue to provide patient care uninterrupted. The Harris Center is actively working with their teams, as well as third-party security response specialists to investigate and restore full functionality. The incident was reported to law enforcement. At the advice of their cyber security experts, the Harris Center is unable to provide additional information at this time, but we will keep the community informed should we learn of further impacts.

We take Harris County’s cyber security extremely seriously. The Harris County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management and Harris County Information Technology continue to work with the Harris Center to manage this incident.   

The Harris Center