Cyber incident pulls New Mexico's only Level 1 trauma center offline

The University of New Mexico Health System (UNM Health) in Albuquerque diverted all ambulance traffic and canceled appointments at more than 30 clinics on Monday, 26 October 2026, after what it calls a "cybersecurity event." Because UNM operates the state's only Level 1 trauma center, the diversion briefly left New Mexico without an emergency department equipped for the most serious injuries.

UNM has not described the nature of the incident. The account here comes from UNM's own Health Sciences Center statement, Associated Press reporting via SecurityWeek, and local coverage from the Albuquerque Journal and KOB 4.

What happened

Per UNM's statement, which it updated at 2:30 p.m., 6:08 p.m., and 10:27 p.m. on 26 October:

• Ambulance traffic was diverted to other hospitals from the early afternoon.
• All clinic appointments on 26 October were canceled; outpatient surgeries were suspended and new patient intake was temporarily limited.
• Classes at the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Population Health are canceled Tuesday, 27 October, including remote classes. Non-essential HSC staff were told to stay home.
• The AP reports employees saw messages appear on their computers claiming student, employee, and patient data had been stolen — a detail UNM's own statement does not confirm. One expert quoted by the AP called breaching a system to display a message "pretty unusual."

Status as of Monday night

UNM's 10:27 p.m. update said UNM Hospital and Sandoval Regional Medical Center are open, clinics would resume scheduled appointments Tuesday, and classes remain canceled Tuesday. IT security teams were still working to resolve the event.

Attribution and data

No group has claimed responsibility, and UNM has not said whether data was actually compromised. The on-screen "we stole your data" messages reported by the AP are a claim by the intruder, not a confirmed exfiltration — treat it as unverified until UNM or law enforcement says otherwise. UNM notified state and federal law enforcement; the AP reports the FBI is assisting, and the matter is an active investigation.

What to do today

If you're a UNM Health patient or employee:

1. Confirm appointment status through UNM's official channels before traveling — clinics were resuming in phases.
2. Don't act on unsolicited "UNM Health breach" messages by phone or email yet; no notification process has been announced, and incident-themed phishing is predictable.
3. Providers in the region: expect continued diversion and capacity strain at neighboring facilities while UNM recovers.

Context

Healthcare remains the sector where a cyber incident most directly becomes a patient-safety event: a trauma center offline is measured in diverted ambulances, not just downtime. UNM joins a run of 2026 hospital incidents that forced clinical diversions; the pattern is consistent enough that trauma-center continuity planning now has to assume IT can go dark without warning.