Cyber insecurity now impacts the health and wellness of Americans
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We need a clearer treatment plan.
Rep. Mark Green, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, argues for a multi-pronged, proactive approach to protect health care networks.When a hospital in Wichita, Kansas, faced dangerous disruptions to patient care in May, it was not due to the challenges one might expect, such as hospital-acquired infections or staffing shortages. Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph experienced a cyberattack. Unfortunately, this hospital was not alone.
In February, cybercriminals hacked Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth — one of our nation’s largest health care insurers. Attackers exploited UnitedHealth’s lack of multifactor authentication, severely interrupting UnitedHealth’s services. Ultimately, the attackers forced the company to pay a $22 million ransom to re-access customer data.
Cyberattacks in the health care sector are becoming as common as routine checkups — and we need a clearer treatment plan.
Last year, 1 in 3 Americans were affected by health care data breaches, and 133 million records were exposed. Cyberattacks against hospitals doubled in 2023 compared to 2022. According to a May survey conducted by the firm Software Advice, roughly 1 in 4 health care computer hacks impacted patient care.
We must take proactive steps to keep our health care networks and physical infrastructure healthy and resilient. To do so, the public and private sectors must work together to ensure accountability in implementing cybersecurity best practices and accessibility to cybersecurity services.
First, accountability. While interconnected information technology systems can make our lives easier, dependency on a handful of vendors can create concentration risk that could have significant impacts if something goes wrong.
The global IT outage in July caused by CrowdStrike’s errant update, which even impacted medical procedures, demonstrated the widespread consequences a mistake in cyberspace can have on our daily lives.
Know more at:
https://cyberscoop.com/health-care-cybersecurity-mark-green-op-ed/