LANSING, Mich. — After this week's cyberattack targeting Portage-based Stryker Corporation, several health systems in Michigan have taken equipment made by the company offline.
It is not clear which health care programs sidelined Stryker products, but the impact includes some hospitals using backup communication methods to contact ambulance services, according to a spokesperson at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
On Wednesday morning, employees found laptops and mobile devices tied to their Stryker accounts were locked up. The company confirmed it was targeted in a cyber attack directed through its Microsoft suite, disrupting networks in Stryker facilities across the world.
Workers at the company's global headquarters in Portage were told to not report to work on Wednesday and to keep their devices from connecting to the internet.
Stryker has since reported the situation is contained, saying health systems who use its products should not have been affected. The company's order processing, manufacturing, and shipping operations were disrupted, according to a statement.
A hacker group which supports the Iran regime claimed responsibility for the cyberattack.
Stryker says it is working with law enforcement and government agencies to investigate how its systems were infiltrated and what hackers were able to access.
The attack comes after the FBI issued a warning that Iran plotted to carry out a revenge attack on California using drones. The FBI has also warned that Iran has set up a significant network in Mexico and in South America.
WATCH: Expert warns Iran may continue to attack U.S. assets
While experts warn that large-scale attacks are very unlikely, the threat still exists. Daniel Byman, director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats and Terrorism program at CSIS, said the ongoing war is also raising new questions about how Iran may approach future attacks.
"In the past, Iran has been careful about attacks on the U.S. homeland — although there have been some plots," Byman said. "But there really is question right now, which is are the rules different? Is the all-out war changing how Iran approaches this? But I'm also looking at Iranian attacks on American and Israeli targets around the world. There Iran has been more aggressive over the years. We've seen Iran do attacks in places as different as Argentina and Bulgaria and southeast Asia. And of course there are a lot of Americans, there are a lot of American companies, there are a lot of Israeli and Jewish targets around the world and Iran in the past has been willing to attack these. And I think it's at least possible that they're trying to do so right now. The good news is there is a pretty aggressive counterterrorism effort to stop it, but unfortunately the terrorists only have to get lucky once."
