Report assesses hospitals’ cyber resiliency

The Healthcare Sector Coordinating Council and Department of Health and Human Services released a report benchmarking best practices and opportunities for improvement in hospital cyber resiliency. AHA contributed to the report, which assesses hospitals’ current cybersecurity capabilities and readiness and may inform future federal policy decisions on how to improve their resiliency.

“As high-impact ransomware attacks targeting U.S. hospitals have increased in frequency and severity, often resulting in the disruption and delay of health care delivery, the federal government has prioritized taking proactive measures to improve our capability to defend against and recover from these attacks,” said John Riggi, AHA’s national advisor for cybersecurity and risk. “While we agree that U.S. hospitals must do what they reasonably and financially can on cyber defense, we also agree with the recently released White House cyber strategy, which places assistance to victim organizations at the center of the government strategy and emphasizes the need for greater offensive action by the government. It is clear that a combined and coordinated policy of defensive measures by the field accompanied by offensive action by the government is necessary to reduce cyber risk in a significant and sustainable manner. We look forward to continuing to work with the government and sector partners to help inform this process and shared responsibility to defend the nation’s hospitals and our patients against cyberattacks.” 

For more information on this or other cyber and risk issues, contact Riggi at jriggi@aha.org. For the latest cyber and risk resources and threat intelligence, visit aha.org/cybersecurity.