The administrators of the BlackCat ransomware-as-a-service group claim law enforcement has shut down their operation. But experts and affiliates accuse the group's leadership of running an exit scam on the heels of a $22 million ransom payment by a recent victim - Optum's Change Healthcare unit.
Two weeks into a major cyberattack-induced outage at its Change Healthcare business, UnitedHealth Group is offering short-term financial aid to some healthcare providers whose cash flows may be running short because of the disruption in insurance payments. But not everyone is impressed.
Ransomware group Rhysida is offering to sell "exclusive data" stolen from a Chicago children's hospital for $3.4 million on the dark web, while the hospital is still struggling to recover its IT systems, including its electronic health records and patient portal, one month after the attack.
The Health Sector Coordinating Council has issued a five-year strategic plan - "a call to action" - for healthcare and public health organizations to implement cybersecurity programs that do a better job of protecting their patients against the ever-rising tide of threats.
As the volume of major health data breaches rises, the federal agency charged with investigating those incidents told Congress this week that it lacks the needed funding to keep up with its mounting workload. The agency also separately announced its second ransomware HIPAA breach settlement.
An Arizona firm that provides administrative services to a dozen ophthalmology practices in several states is notifying nearly 2.4 million patients of a data theft incident. The hack is among the latest recent major data breaches involving vendors of critical services to healthcare firms.
A bipartisan pair of congressmen is again attempting to address long-standing issues of patient safety and privacy - as well as medical errors, inadvertent information disclosures and denied medical claims - which all occur when patients and the health records used to treat them do not match.
Two new guidance resources - one from regulators and the other from an industry council - aim to help healthcare firms strengthen their protection of sensitive patient information and critical IT systems. The publications come as the Biden administration is pushing the sector to up its cyber game.
When a hospital or clinic is hit with a cyberattack, it often seems as if the electronic health record systems just can't win. Even if the EHR system is not the prime target of the attack, it's still frequently taken off line as the organization responds to the incident. What should entities do?
In the latest weekly update, four ISMG editors discussed the relatively low profile of cyberwarfare in recent international conflicts, the potential revival of a dormant HIPAA compliance audit program and the security implications of sovereign AI development.
An Oklahoma-based healthcare system is notifying 2.4 million individuals that their sensitive information was potentially compromised in an exfiltration incident last year. Cybercriminals have been attempting to extort ransom payments directly from some of those affected patients - including kids.
As U.S. federal regulators fine-tune a strategy to push the healthcare sector into strengthening its cybersecurity posture, they are dusting off a HIPAA compliance audit program that's been dormant for the last seven years. A new round of HIPAA audits for regulated entities is in the works.
A new bipartisan Senate bill would require the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to biennially conduct cybersecurity reviews and tests on its IT systems and report to Congress on how it is updating its cybersecurity strategy to keep up with evolving cyberthreats.
The Department of Health and Human Services has finalized regulations to better align federal requirements for the confidentiality of substance use disorder records with privacy protections afforded under HIPAA. The aim is to improve care coordination while enhancing sensitive data protections.
U.S. federal authorities are again warning the healthcare sector about threats from the Akira ransomware group. The latest alert comes on the heels of several recent attacks by the gang, including one last month on Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which affected an IT system used by emergency responders.
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