In-brief: the U.S. healthcare sector is in critical condition and needs urgent, coordinated action to protect patient safety and address vulnerabilities in millions of deployed medical devices, a Congressional Task Force has concluded. (Updated with comments from Joshua Corman of Atlantic Council. PFR June 7, 2017)
Software used to remotely program implantable cardiac devices by a number of vendors is rife with exploitable software vulnerabilities that leave the devices vulnerable to attacks and compromise, according to a report by the firm Whitescope Inc.
In-brief: Hospitals across England were forced to divert patients from emergency departments after suffering what has been described as a cyber attack involving ransomware, according to published reports and a statement from the UK’s National Health Service. (Editor’s Note: Updated to include information on the Wana ransomware. PFR May 12, 2017)
In-brief: The FBI is telling medical and dental offices to lock down anyFile Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers in their environments, warning that cyber criminals are searching for exposed FTP servers as a pathway to sensitive networks and protected health information (PHI).
In-brief: One in four Americans was the victim of data theft, but policy makers can’t find the spirit to act. What if I said that there was a disease that affected one in four adults in the U.S.? This disease caused pain and hardship and the costs of curing it were considerable – ranging to thousands of dollars per patient? And, again: one in four people contacted this disease – 25% of the adult population?Most epidemiologists would consider a disease that widely spread to be an “epidemic.” After all, the CDC considers an influenza outbreak to be an “epidemic” when around 7% of morbidity (deaths) in a given observation period are due to the flu. Here in the U.S., however, there’s a long-standing affliction bearing down on a quarter of the population, but nary a mention of the words “epidemic.” In fact, officials who monitor this disease are loath to […]
