The FBI formally announced an investigation on Feb. 7 into the “cybersecurity incident” at Lurie Children’s Hospital, Kathleen Foody reported to CBS News and The Daily Herald.

The hospital has not released an official cause of the event, Todd Feurer reported to CBS News.

 Email, phone, and electronic systems within Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago were offline for over a week following a “cybersecurity incident” that began on January 31.  In response to the incident, Lurie canceled certain elective surgeries, procedures, and checkups, Foody reported.

  “We are taking this very seriously, investigating with the support of leading experts, and are working in collaboration with law enforcement agencies,” the hospital said in a statement on Feb. 1. 

Experts say the incident is consistent with the recent rise in ransomware attacks, which are typically carried out by criminals locking up data, documents, and sensitive information and demanding payment to get it back, Foody wrote. Situations similar to Lurie’s have been on the rise, causing disrupted care for patients nationwide, according to a 2023 Department of Health and Human Services report covering the potential for increases in digital attacks on healthcare and public health entities.

“Hospitals and everything we rely on nowadays depends on computers, servers, and cloud services,” Robin Berthier, the co-founder of Network Perception, reported to CBS News. “And those can be disrupted by cyberattacks, which means malware or attackers.”