Cyberattack forces major US health care network to divert ambulances from hospitals
Cyberattack forces major US health care network to divert ambulances from hospitals
A major US health care system said Thursday that it is diverting ambulances from “several” of its hospitals following a cyberattack this week.
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This keeps happening and has been happening for several years now; why isn’t more being done to improve security and find the criminals? I can’t walk into a hospital with so much as a pocket knife because of physical security concerns, but cybercriminals keep taking down a new system seemingly every week, and this article says the software used has been seen for years now.
why isn’t more being done to improve security and find the criminals?
It is but Law Enforcement and Healthcare I.T. can't keep up with the growing number of threats and threat actors. From the perspective of someone in Healthcare I.T. I've watched lots of money, time, and effort get spent on securing systems but it's never quite enough and it never happens fast enough.
MFA all the things, HIPS on everything, EDR on everything, Zero Trust everything, regular patching of all systems, High End Firewalls, encrypt all the things, bi-annual security reviews, DNS Filtering, regular network sweeps for unknown or unmanaged equipment...and you can still end up getting whacked by a 0 Day exploit in a commercial helpdesk tool. (This is what got Change / Optum).
The criminals typically belong to overseas hacking groups, many of which are in places that Western Law Enforcement can't reach like Russia, Belarus, China, and North Korea.
It's a nearly impossible challenge and it's never going to end as long as these systems have any path to the public internet.
The FBI et al. do try to find the guys. Arrests happen relatively frequently.
But security improvements don't happen because they cost money, and nobody is making them do it, though this is slowly changing.
When permitting security failures costs more than preventing, then companies will do something.
Can I sue a company for inadequate data protections if my data is breached? I assume I would have to prove damages, and maybe that becomes harder if I can’t tie the victimization to a specific breach. And probably the terms of service make it harder, like I might have to use arbitration and can’t join a class action suit.
The healthcare industry has as much incentive as the financial industry to maintain a high security environment. Fines for exposing PHI can be astronomical if a large number of records are compromised.
This is a new cold war that we've been in for a while now. Government backed hacker groups from foreign nations are constantly targeting high profile organizations. Healthcare, Finance, and Government are three of the top targets.
I work in I.T. for a healthcare company. Ascension is a pretty large one. The bigger a company gets and the faster it grows, the more it takes on a diversity of varying technologies that all need to be managed, migrated, killed off, merged, hardened, etc. It’s a difficult job especially for healthcare. I know that the company I work for is working very hard to keep up with things, but it’s a logistical nightmare. You MUST have very smart people in charge that have the right priorities. You have to have information channels open to make sure administration knows what the potential issues are. Compartmentalization of information and access. There are so many potential points of failure it’s insane. And then there’s the most important thing of all: making sure all employees are educated enough that they don’t let their credentials get compromised.
Things are getting worse in general because of how hard it is to stay on top of everything nowadays. I just recently got a couple of letters in the mail about my info being leaked by some companies that had my info. I just have to do my part to stay on top of my own responsibilities, watch my own identity and finances, and make sure those around me are being secure, as well. Everybody needs to know how important this is, and many do, but I don’t think enough people really understand or make it a priority.
HHS is instituting new rules for healthcare (and other industries) to help track and respond to these things. The government is getting very involved with this now. I hope it helps.
I'm in IT in a healthcare-adjacent sector. Never underestimate the motivation or tenacity of foreign state actors, organized crime and chaotic neutral hacking collectives. You have limited time and budget, and both financial and risk based approval processes to deal with. They have time, ideology¹, and financial incentives.
You can't win in the face of that.
¹ sometimes it's hacking for hackings sake, but more typically it's to disrupt critical services and extort modest capital to go away. Rinse, repeat, make that bank on volume.
Fixing the issue doesn't line the pockets of investors. People aren't going to stop going to the hospital, so why fix it?
Fixing the issue doesn’t line the pockets of investors.
Yeah it does. Cyber Security companies are making tons of money selling things like EDR, High End Firewalls, DNS Filtering, MFA, and so on. Healthcare Institutions are buying the stuff but none of it is enough.
It's the age old race of Arms vs Armorer.