Cybersecurity

It's not just hospitals and pharmacies that have been disrupted by the cyberattack on Optum's Change Healthcare — physician practices have been hit hard too.

What does the Change Healthcare ransomware incident mean for healthcare organizations? Doubling your cybersecurity spending, according to one health system CIO. 

Ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations have cost the U.S. economy nearly $80 billion in downtime. There's another expense that doesn't come with a price tag: The sense of stress and helplessness outages cause. 

Optum's Change Healthcare confirmed Feb. 29 that it was hacked by a ransomware gang after the group claimed to have stolen massive amounts of data.

What is the main concern for hospitals and health systems when it comes to the Change Healthcare attack? The potential impact to patient care and safety, John Riggi, the American Hospital Association's national adviser for cybersecurity and risk, told Becker's. 

Healthcare organizations experienced 35% of third-party breaches, according to a Feb. 28 report from Security Scorecard. 

The ransomware group linked to the cyberattack on Change Healthcare is also targeting hospitals, the FBI and HHS warned Feb. 27.

A ransomware gang that has targeted the healthcare sector has claimed responsibility for the cyberattack on Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and is attempting to sell its data for $3.4 million, The Record reported Feb. 27.

The American Hospital Association penned a letter to the HHS about the Change Healthcare attack stating that the incident may have "an immediate adverse impact on hospitals' finances."

Healthcare organizations utilizing the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework as their primary framework experienced smaller increases in cyber insurance premiums than those not employing the NIST CSF, a Feb. 27 report from KLAS found.