Privacy & Security

Cyberattackers have been shifting to strategies where legitimate tools commonly installed on desktops and servers are abused for malicious purposes. To fight back, knowledge is power.

While he praises the EU's data protection regulations, Eric Sutherland, senior health economist at the OECD, believes policies and standards must "harmonize" to ensure that public health organizations can access health data as needed.

Stolen data involved those e-prescriptions issued before the eRx transition late last year.

Calling Blackbaud's security before a major data breach "lax," the Federal Trade Commission said the company allowed a hacker to steal PII and PHI, and ordered it to delete old data and report on its data usage going forward.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, ARPA-H, seeks to scale hospitals' cybersecurity capacity by automating patch deployments across networks and medical devices, speeding the time from vulnerability detection to software updates.

The guide, which encourages secure-by-design software development, is the latest in government efforts to shore up vulnerable organizations. It summarizes cybersecurity best practices and links to free support resources.

As cyberattacks increase in scope and intensity, the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange is asking the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies to do more to help health systems maintain operational continuity.

Also: CommonSpirit reports increased earnings in the year after a major ransomware disruption and widespread data breach.

Hackers may have entered through one of its third-party vendors.

While all facilities are reportedly open and providing care, disruptions continue, with some provider sites unable to fill prescriptions, certain procedures rescheduled and delays in diagnostic imaging and testing.