How a €13 Million MRI Machine Turns into a Pile of Scrap Metal

A single data leak can cost millions – or paralyze entire systems. The Innovation Day Mainfranken 2025 impressively demonstrated how serious the threat of cybercrime is. Under the motto “Digital. Secure. Protected.

The Innovation Day was organized by the Würzburg-Schweinfurt University of Applied Sciences (THWS), the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU), the Würzburg-Schweinfurt Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) and Region Mainfranken GmbH. Representatives from science, business and administration discussed the topic on the Sanderheinrichsleitenweg campus.

Cyberattacks as a real danger for Mainfranken’s SMEs

Caroline Trips, President of the Würzburg-Schweinfurt Chamber of Industry and Commerce, emphasized:

“Small and medium-sized enterprises in particular are at risk. Events such as the Innovation Day help to network knowledge and bundle regional expertise.”

THWS President Prof. Dr. Jean Meyer referred to the THWS’s technology transfer centers (TTZ), in particular the TTZ-WUE in Ochsenfurt, which supports companies in matters of IT security.

Together with the University of Würzburg, Mainfranken is very well positioned in this field – not only in research, but also in transfer, as Prof. Dr. Matthias Bode, Vice President for Innovation, made clear.

The live demo by Aleksander Paravac from the computer center of the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg demonstrated how easily one can penetrate foreign systems and what damage can be done unnoticed. With current hardware and software, it is more difficult for attackers, but investment in the operators is also of central importance.

The human factor – the biggest gateway

The Innovation Day illustrated how a €13 million MRI machine can turn into a pile of scrap metal with a drastic example from practice: Ingo Jung from the University Hospital Frankfurt am Main explained how the hacker attack on the hospital took place and what measures the board and IT chose to keep the damage as low as possible. This also included the gradual opening of point-to-point encryption of the large medical devices, the temperature monitoring of which is now running via the cloud.

The contribution of the company Madinger impressively showed that not only technology, but also people can become a weak point. At the medium-sized industrial company from the Schweinfurt district, a virus entered the system after employees opened the attachment of an email…

Prof. Dr. Kristin Weber, Vice President for Digitalization at THWS, and Key Note Speaker Susann Bartels from The Strongest Link made it clear that the system must be viewed holistically and that resources must also be made available for this.

Bettina Gardenne, Managing Director of Region Mainfranken GmbH, concluded by emphasizing the importance of regional exchange:

“Cyber security is not a technical niche issue, but a shared responsibility. The key is to learn from each other – across all industries.”

Conclusion

The Innovation Day Mainfranken 2025 focused on cyber security and impressively showed: nobody is safe from a hacker attack. Digital security is therefore not a luxury, but a necessity for survival. Only through knowledge transfer, cooperation and awareness can it be prevented that high-tech innovations such as an MRI machine – in the worst case – become a pile of scrap metal.

Organizer:

Würzburg-Schweinfurt University of Applied Sciences (THWS) | Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) | Würzburg-Schweinfurt Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) | Region Mainfranken GmbH