By Kevin Hendricks, The Paper. — UNM Health clinics reopened Tuesday, but the fallout from Monday’s cyber incident may just be starting. A ransomware group now claims it stole personal information belonging to University of New Mexico students and employees.
UNM Hospital and Sandoval Regional Medical Center in Rio Rancho are both open, and all clinics resumed regularly scheduled appointments and procedures Oct. 27, Health Sciences Center officials said in a Monday night update. UNM Health will contact patients to reschedule appointments and procedures missed Monday.
What the hackers claim
An emerging ransomware group called BYOD has listed UNM on its data leak site, according to cybersecurity intelligence firm VenariX, as reported by Infosecurity Magazine. The group claims it compromised 36,000 machines and stole sensitive data, including student and employee personal information, student records, research data and internal emails.
The group’s claim does not specifically mention patient records. The Paper could not independently verify the claim, and UNM has not said what caused the outage.
What UNM says
IT security teams moved to contain the problem Monday and notified state and federal law enforcement, officials said. From 12:30 to 2:30 p.m., UNM Health limited the new patients it accepted, and health systems in Albuquerque and Santa Fe took them instead. Systems began coming back online in phases at 2:30 p.m.
Officials said the active law enforcement investigation limits what they can share.
BY THE NUMBERS
- 1 million+: Patient visits to UNM HSC each year
- About 900,000: Outpatient appointments each year
- About 100,000: Emergency room visits each year
- 2,670: Health sciences students enrolled in 2025
(Source: UNM HSC, via Infosecurity Magazine)
Classes at the School of Medicine and the colleges of Nursing, Pharmacy and Population Health are cancelled Tuesday, including online and remote classes. Classes on UNM’s Central and branch campuses continue as normal. Nonessential Health Sciences Center employees should stay home. Clinical and essential staff, and students with clinical duties, should report as usual.
MORE INFO
- Emergencies: Call 911
- Updates from UNM: hscnews.unm.edu/
- Missed Monday appointments: UNM Health will contact you to reschedule