#medical cybersecurity

[osintelligence]

https://bit.ly/45aeLG5 - 🏥 A recent cyberattack has caused significant disruptions in hospitals and healthcare facilities across several states. Emergency rooms have been forced to shut down, and ambulances have been diverted, affecting primary care services at facilities run by Prospect Medical Holdings. Recovery efforts are underway, with the extent of the problem still being assessed. In the meantime, hospitals are relying on paper systems and human assistance. #Cyberattack #HealthcareDisruption 💻 John Riggi of the American Hospital Association has emphasized the severity of the situation, indicating that the recovery process can take weeks. This attack is not merely a threat to data but has real-life consequences on patient safety and community well-being.

[manageditserviceslosangeles]

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[drnic1]

Paging Dr. Malware

Health Tech Havoc This month’s episode of “News You Can Use” on HealthcareNOWRadio features news from the month of May 2024 News You Can Use with your Hosts Dr Craig Joseph and Dr Nick van Terheyden The show that gives you a quick insight into the latest news, twists, turns and debacles going on in healthcare withmy friend and co-host Craig Joseph, MD (@CraigJoseph) Chief Medical Officer at…

[innonurse]

New AI algorithm could enhance autoimmune disease prediction and therapy

- By InnoNurse Staff -

An advanced AI algorithm from Penn State University may enhance the accuracy and timing of predictions and introduce novel treatments for autoimmune diseases.

By examining the genetic code, the algorithm better models gene expression and regulation, identifying additional risk genes associated with these conditions.

Read more at Penn State

///

Other recent news and insights

Illuminating neurovascular dynamics with 3D-printed implants and bioluminescence (SPIE)

New device enables paraplegics to partially regain hand function (AFP/Medical Xpress)

Innovative 3D printing techniques for eye condition treatments (University of East Anglia/Medical Xpress)

Australia: The MediSecure data breach explained (The Conversation)

[bitstream24]

The Myth: Controller Area Network (CAN) is “Too Easy to Hack”

The potential security issues of CAN and its higher-layer protocols attract increased attention from the automotive, control, and medical industries. At first glance, believing that a well-documented standard like ISO 11898 makes it easier to manipulate control functions, whether in an automobile or a medical device such as an MRI or CT scanner, makes sense.

[emerituscs]

Emeritus Makes Cyber Security for Healthcare Industry Easy

The main concern of a healthcare organization that has a number of equipments and electronic data is protecting its confidentiality, maintain its integrity and make the data available for internal purpose to every patient and their doctor. Cyber security for healthcare industry involves protecting their data and assets from unwanted access. The number of cyber attacks has been increasing every day. A new threat arises as soon as one gets resolved. Thus, healthcare cybersecurity companies are very vigilant about the healthcare organization’s data. To ensure that vulnerable data is protected all the time regular checks and routine tests are made. A healthcare provider if doesn’t take strict measures to keep data safe, the number of attacks would lead to a disastrous situation. Secure networks and platforms are essential to keep an eye on the ever changing threat arising from various criminal sources. 

Employees are vulnerable to phishing schemes due to the lack of cybersecurity education within these organizations. Thus, medical staff and employees should be vigilant about it. Healthcare providers have been worried about these factors for a while, and the pandemic has only intensified them. Healthcare organizations must prioritize cybersecurity in medical devices by focusing on these areas as they recover from the pandemic and other cyberattacks. HIMSS stipulates that cyber-security knowledge is required of both workforce and c-suite members. There should be more than one person or team responsible for cybersecurity and its operations. It is important for anyone working as a healthcare provider to be aware of basic practices and the consequences of a cyberattack. Engaging employees in cyber risk assessment topics through sessions and trainings.  By doing this, they can gain more knowledge about the subject. Employees must be able to recognize the warning signs in the event of a data breach. 

According to Cyber security and risk advisory AHA, there is a reason why healthcare cyber threats are high. They possess a high amount of valuable info that cyber criminals can use them to target the subject. The stolen data includes patient’s protected heath info. Critical financial information like credit cards, bank account numbers, social security numbers that are related to their medical records are available on their networks that are vulnerable to threats. There are medical researches, ideas and inventions that are confidential to disclose are stored in the organization’s network. If they are left unsecured major breaches leading to monetary loss. 

Medical cybersecurity should keep an eye out for the three major cyber threats. Malware, ransomware and distributed denial of service attacks are the three major cyberattacks that a healthcare organization should look out for. Emeritus, provider of IT support and hospital cyber security, has always insisted on a culture of cybersecurity awareness in a healthcare organization. Every employee should proactively try to protect patients and their data. Both the organization and its patients will benefit greatly from mitigating cyber risks due to its tremendous impact. Visit us at https://www.emerituscs.com/ to know about other services we provide.

[digitalcreationsllc]

Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigating cybersecurity incident

Vanderbilt University Medical Center said it is investigating a cybersecurity incident that led to the compromise of a database. VUMC runs seven hospitals and multiple healthcare facilities across Nashville, Tennessee — serving more than three million patients each year. The organization is one of the largest employers in the state with 40,000 employees and has more than 1,7000 beds across its…

[singnorequiemtonight]

I've been thinking about looking into becoming an IT since I was a teenager because I learned a lot from Ken (especially about anti-malware softwares) but also I never wanted to follow in his footsteps because he was a shitty role model. But with the direction the internet is going these days, and the fact I already know that computers and their networks are well-within my capability to get an online / tech school degree in because he started teaching me about them early on like ... I might just talk to my community support specialist next time I see her about looking into going to school for it. Not for or because I'm like my father, but for myself, to prove that I can do it, and because it sounds like our generation needs more people doing this work and less AIs.

[biot-med]

Transform Medical Devices into Connected-Care Solutions with BioT’s No-code Platform

[ironedsleeper]

Hey so if y’all heard of a big IT outage today thats thanks to the fine folks over at Crowdstrike. I see a lot of people blaming Microsoft and while they have plenty to answer for this actually isn’t their fault. See Crowdstrike is a cybersecurity company that has customers all over the world, you’ll likely see in the news that a lot of airlines use them for example.

What Im not seeing reported on at all is that hospitals use them too. I was at the hospital last night with my girlfriend when everything went down, every computer in the building blue-screened. It wasn’t panic, those nurses were absolutely badass and kept everything calm, going room to room informing patients and letting everyone know they were working on switching to pen and paper. No printers by the way so it was literally pen and paper.

Crowdstrike still hasn’t released a statement, though the ceo did make a tweet that included, “we are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption”. There was a patient admitted to triage while we were in the hospital who wasn’t responsive so the hospital staff couldn’t do anything. They couldn’t pull up records, couldn’t run labs, they had no way of knowing what medications he might have been allergic to.

“Deeply sorry for the inconvenience” as the entire nicU lost their computer systems at the Phoenix Children’s Hospital.

Maybe just keep in mind when youre making jokes about this that this massive fuckup had a cost in human lives.

[medxsolutions]

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[ew-selfish-art]

DP x DC AU: Tim had heard the phrase 'The wrong twin made it home' a number of times in his life, his parents were always very upfront about how the felt towards him. But... 'made it home' doesn't indicate death, does it? ...Tim ends up taking Danny's place by Sam's side in front of Congress to lobby the end of the Anti-Ecto Acts.

...

Tim has been up for hours passed when he told Alfred he would be resting and he's wrapped up his case files into neat little bows to deliver to Babs and the GCPD/Lawyers to do their jobs. Damian had made a comment earlier in their patrol that night about Tim being the wrong sibling to make it to his rescue and... and it got him thinking about that phrase. His parents were negligent with him, certainly, but they were always very clear about how he stood in their eyes. Praise and criticism were the two options, and very strictly limited passes of 'I love yous' that faded as he got older.

He's run his DNA before in the national databases- it was critical for maintaining his Alias' that multiple people didn't flag- but he's never searched in records before. About his twin. About the one who didn't make it home.

And its definitely the lack of sleep, and definitely the lack of brotherly affection he feels these days, but Tim just can't close the door until he's seen a death certificate. He's hacked Gotham General Hospital a million times for work, but doing it for his own gain feels wrong some how and he works with extreme caution. He finds his own birth certificate and... One Theodore Daniel Drake.

Tim snorts with a short ha, pretentious name alert and goes on to find not a single certificate of death or medical record of atypia. Oh no, what he finds is adoption paperwork meant to be closed to all wondering eyes and one Daniel James Fenton leaving the hospital instead. Tim blinks a few times, retraces his steps and then sure enough, learns for a second time that his TWIN was still alive.

Finding the Fentons was easy enough, their Lab address on all of their patents was seemingly also their home address. Danny had a much better hidden internet presence, it was good cybersecurity he'd have to praise him, but Tim had been trained better. Getting into his brother's files... Raised a number of new questions. Why was he compiling evidence against the government? What the fuck was he doing analyzing policy? Why did he have 'rogue' files???

Then Tim hacks into Danny's phone (he's learned at this point that Daniel was a no-go) and sees the conversations between his twin and his twin's best friends.

Sam Manson has an appointment with a Senator to Lobby for the end of the Anti-Ecto Acts. She wants Danny to join her, demonstrate something Tim can't determine, but he's refusing to leave and let his adoptive parents have even a moment to develop a new weapon without him there to destroy it. Someone called CW warned him about changes coming his way or something cryptic. Tim learns a lot from their back and forth, but stops reading once it gets to their personal squabbles.

Tim gets the meeting details and forwards it to Tam- If Danny can't make it... Tim will. And if Tim can't demonstrate whatever Danny was going to, it would at least help to throw around his name.

Tim writes an email to Danny- It's meant to go out after the lobbying appointment- and it explains that Tim found out about him and wants to connect if Danny does, and if Danny doesn't he at least wants to get him set up with his half of the Drake family inheritance. He includes a few personal facts, including that he too ended up adopted in life and had siblings, that he helped run a company and took on the world too soon. It takes a lot out of Tim to be so candid- but he doesn't want Danny to be too blindsided by the Waynes. He attaches a family photo with the label "you'll be able to tell which one is me'.

...

Sam is tapping her stupid, uncomfortable heels waiting for these dumbass, elderly politicians to get their shit together so she can speak. Sam was resourceful and surprisingly, the second she took on politics as a way to waste the family money, her mother Pamela was all for it. She's wanting Sam to run for president now... At least she doesn't complain when Sam organizes protests.

The door behind her opens, and while she knows its not going to be Danny behind her, a girl can feel a bit crushed. She really thought he would be behind her today, but Danny was being weird about this whole thing. Clockwork had him spooked about something changing today, and Danny wanted to be in Amity Park in case it was another Pariah situation or something. His parents had been on edge lately too...

"Sorry, I'm not late am I?" A voice asks and it's just so close but not- Sam turns her head to see Danny in a nice suit with long hair and eyebags way darker than she'd seen on him in a while. This... Wasn't Danny. She blinks, and then something in her anxiously decides that the universe is fucking with her and she will be fighting back.

"Everyone is late." She glares at him, appraising his every move. The woman behind him is typing dedicatedly on her tablet and the man himself looks like he might fall over while he shuffles his files in hand.

"Well, then I'm on time. My name is Tim Drake, I'm here to help your cause in getting the Anti-Ecto acts repealed and the parties responsible for it apprehended."

"Tim Drake? As in-"

"As in Co-CEO of Wayne Enterprises. And I've done a lot of research, so I hope you'll let me play a supportive role while you speak."

"There's no way you've been able to research if you've been out of Amity, The whole city is under a media blackout." Sam's glare looks like it could cut him.

"Not to brag, but that sort of thing doesn't slow me down these days. I've made physical copies of the things they're most likely to delete and I've sent everything to the Justice League, who in turn are sending it to the Lantern Corps." He states matter-of-factly and Sam finally stops being angry at the world to just be... stumped. What the hell was going on?

"How did you... Why?"

"Tam, tell Ms. Manson how passionate I am about human rights?" The guy sounds anxious, the woman rolls her eyes and says "Very." without stopping her typing.

The doors open and Sam has only a moment to decide that Tim can join her... He proves himself to be an asset, and his name alone gets them further than she had anticipated getting today.

....

Danny is watching Sam walk into the space via C-span, gasping when his own likeness follows behind her. What the fuck???

He can barely drag his eyes away as the clone (?) introduces himself as Tim Drake and proceeds to rip them into shreds for delaying Sam Manson of all people. Danny is transfixed and Tucker is blowing up his phone.

"DUDE ARE YOU SEEING THIS?" Tucker's voice loudly calls out the second danny blindly answers.

"Dude, I just, I don't even know? He cant be a clone right? But he's gotta be?" Danny hypothesizes.

"Nah dude, there's like, a whole lifetime of media presence for Tim Drake since he was like, tiny. This is so weird he looks just like you..."

"This is so weird." Danny dumbly agrees because he can't think of anything else to say.

Sam finishes her points, Tim submits the evidence to the court and they leave. Danny's phone pings with an email notification.

"Danny my guy, you should check that, Sam isn't responding yet. Her phone is probably still off."

He follows Tucker's advise and opening his email... Is a new message from Tim Drake.

"...I don't know what the fuck is going on?" Danny continues to say, and Tucker asks him just to read it out loud, "It's just... Apparently I am both adopted and a twin?"

"...My guy." Tucker sounds just as much at a loss.

...

Sam calls them both after Tim Drake is rushed away by his PA Tam (who she found herself admiring more and more), and is relieved when they dont immediately answer by screaming.

"So Danny, Tucker, you guys are traveling with me next weekend." Sam deadpans.

"Apparently shit gets twilight-zone level weird anytime you leave Amity!" Tucker exclaims.

"...What's next weekend?" Danny asks, hesitation in his voice.

"Your twin invited us, well, mostly you, to a Wayne Family Brunch. We're going cause those assholes have money and political influence, you're going because we all probably need to know what the fuck is going on with that guy."

[cicerfics]

00Q Headcanon

One more quick headcanon, as 007 Fest 2024 draws to a close!

After Bond retires (and he and Q FINALLY get together), I like to think that Q slowly shifts his focus away from ballistics/cybersecurity and into the biotech sector. There's lots of medical work to be done with nanobots, and Q is a world-class specialist in that field!

Plus, this career shift allows Q to fulfill his ultimate goal: turning his husband into the bionic man.

...OK, not literally. But as Bond ages, he needs some help with certain things! Contact lenses that can magnify the text he's reading! Invisible (and extremely durable/waterproof) hearing aids! New alloys for joint replacements! And as Bond becomes genuinely elderly, he develops other health issues that require nanobots to fix.

Q is on the job! He's trailblazing entire new fields of medicine in order to keep his husband alive and healthy for as long as possible! He jokes that Bond is his 'muse', and that he never really did manage to retire from the job of keeping Bond well-equipped and in good repair.

But Q's greatest triumph isn't listed in any medical textbook. It isn't any of the inventions that win him (or one of his aliases) awards and accolades. His greatest accomplishment has nothing to do with guns or bombs or firewalls or even nanobots.

It's the fact that his husband (against all odds!) dies peacefully in his own bed as a very, very, very old man, after they've shared a long and happy life together.

[innonurse]

Abridge secures $150 million to develop generative AI for medical documentation

- By InnoNurse Staff -

According to CEO Shivdev Rao, M.D., the Pittsburgh-based startup secured a $150 million series C fundraising round to fund additional R&D to create solid foundation models that would fuel both enhancements to the business's current technologies and new products.

Read more at Fierce Healthcare

///

Other recent news and insights

While US pharmacy disruptions continue, UnitedHealth claims that Change Healthcare was hacked by a nation-state (TechCrunch)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The surveillance advertising to financial fraud pipeline

Monday (October 2), I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab. On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.

Being watched sucks. Of all the parenting mistakes I've made, none haunt me more than the times my daughter caught me watching her while she was learning to do something, discovered she was being observed in a vulnerable moment, and abandoned her attempt:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2014/may/09/cybersecurity-begins-with-integrity-not-surveillance

It's hard to be your authentic self while you're under surveillance. For that reason alone, the rise and rise of the surveillance industry – an unholy public-private partnership between cops, spooks, and ad-tech scum – is a plague on humanity and a scourge on the Earth:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

But beyond the psychic damage surveillance metes out, there are immediate, concrete ways in which surveillance brings us to harm. Ad-tech follows us into abortion clinics and then sells the info to the cops back home in the forced birth states run by Handmaid's Tale LARPers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/29/no-i-in-uter-us/#egged-on

And even if you have the good fortune to live in a state whose motto isn't "There's no 'I" in uter-US," ad-tech also lets anti-abortion propagandists trick you into visiting fake "clinics" who defraud you into giving birth by running out the clock on terminating your pregnancy:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/15/paid-medical-disinformation/#crisis-pregnancy-centers

The commercial surveillance industry fuels SWATting, where sociopaths who don't like your internet opinions or are steamed because you beat them at Call of Duty trick the cops into thinking that there's an "active shooter" at your house, provoking the kind of American policing autoimmune reaction that can get you killed:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/14/us/swatting-sentence-casey-viner/index.html

There's just a lot of ways that compiling deep, nonconsensual, population-scale surveillance dossiers can bring safety and financial harm to the unwilling subjects of our experiment in digital spying. The wave of "business email compromises" (the infosec term for impersonating your boss to you and tricking you into cleaning out the company bank accounts)? They start with spear phishing, a phishing attack that uses personal information – bought from commercial sources or ganked from leaks – to craft a virtual Big Store con:

https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/scams-and-safety/common-scams-and-crimes/business-email-compromise

It's not just spear-phishers. There are plenty of financial predators who run petty grifts – stock swindles, identity theft, and other petty cons. These scams depend on commercial surveillance, both to target victims (e.g. buying Facebook ads targeting people struggling with medical debt and worried about losing their homes) and to run the con itself (by getting the information needed to pull of a successful identity theft).

In "Consumer Surveillance and Financial Fraud," a new National Bureau of Academic Research paper, a trio of business-school profs – Bo Bian (UBC), Michaela Pagel (WUSTL) and Huan Tang (Wharton) quantify the commercial surveillance industry's relationship to finance crimes:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w31692

The authors take advantage of a time-series of ZIP-code-accurate fraud complaint data from the Consumer Finance Protection Board, supplemented by complaints from the FTC, along with Apple's rollout of App Tracking Transparency, a change to app-based tracking on Apple mobile devices that turned of third-party commercial surveillance unless users explicitly opted into being spied on. More than 96% of Apple users blocked spying:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

In other words, they were able to see, neighborhood by neighborhood, what happened to financial fraud when users were able to block commercial surveillance.

What happened is, fraud plunged. Deprived of the raw material for committing fraud, criminals were substantially hampered in their ability to steal from internet users.

While this is something that security professionals have understood for years, this study puts some empirical spine into the large corpus of qualitative accounts of the surveillance-to-fraud pipeline.

As the authors note in their conclusion, this analysis is timely. Google has just rolled out a new surveillance system, the deceptively named "Privacy Sandbox," that every Chrome user is being opted in to unless they find and untick three separate preference tickboxes. You should find and untick these boxes:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/how-turn-googles-privacy-sandbox-ad-tracking-and-why-you-should

Google has spun, lied and bullied Privacy Sandbox into existence; whenever this program draws enough fire, they rename it (it used to be called FLoC). But as the Apple example showed, no one wants to be spied on – that's why Google makes you find and untick three boxes to opt out of this new form of surveillance.

There is no consensual basis for mass commercial surveillance. The story that "people don't mind ads so long as they're relevant" is a lie. But even if it was true, it wouldn't be enough, because beyond the harms to being our authentic selves that come from the knowledge that we're being observed, surveillance data is a crucial ingredient for all kinds of crime, harassment, and deception.

We can't rely on companies to spy on us responsibly. Apple may have blocked third-party app spying, but they effect nonconsensual, continuous surveillance of every Apple mobile device user, and lie about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

That's why we should ban commercial surveillance. We should outlaw surveillance advertising. Period:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/ban-online-behavioral-advertising

Contrary to the claims of surveillance profiteers, this wouldn't reduce the income to ad-supported news and other media – it would increase their revenues, by letting them place ads without relying on the surveillance troves assembled by the Google/Meta ad-tech duopoly, who take the majority of ad-revenue:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

We're 30 years into the commercial surveillance pandemic and Congress still hasn't passed a federal privacy law with a private right of action. But other agencies aren't waiting for Congress. The FTC and DoJ Antitrust Divsision have proposed new merger guidelines that allow regulators to consider privacy harms when companies merge:

https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FTC-2023-0043-1569

Think here of how Google devoured Fitbit and claimed massive troves of extremely personal data, much of which was collected because employers required workers to wear biometric trackers to get the best deal on health care:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/google-fitbit-merger-would-cement-googles-data-empire

Companies can't be trusted to collect, retain or use our personal data wisely. The right "balance" here is to simply ban that collection, without an explicit opt-in. The way this should work is that companies can't collect private data unless users hunt down and untick three "don't spy on me" boxes. After all, that's the standard that Google has set.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/29/ban-surveillance-ads/#sucker-funnel

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en