The Joint Commission yesterday released an alert reviewing how health care organizations can prepare to deliver safe patient care in the event of a cyberattack, calling the potential to experience a cyberattack that adversely affects operations not an “if” but a “when” question. John Riggi, AHA’s national director for cybersecurity and risk, provided expert advice to TJC as it developed the resource.

“The AHA was very pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with our colleagues at the TJC to produce this alert, which provides guidance on best practices and lessons learned from the many ransomware attacks suffered by hospitals and health system,” Riggi said. “These attacks often impact mission-critical medical and information technology, resulting in the disruption of care delivery and possible risk to patient safety. The alert highlights the need for the interdisciplinary development of downtime procedures for all network and internet-connected technology on which care delivery depends. In the face of these ongoing ransomware attacks, we must prepare robust downtime procedures to maintain not just ‘business continuity’ — but ‘clinical continuity’ — for up to four weeks.”

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.

Related News Articles

Headline
The Department of Health and Human Services Dec. 6 released a concept paper outlining its cybersecurity strategy for the health care sector, which builds…
Headline
Health care and other organizations that operate Unitronics Programmable Logic Controllers should protect the devices from potential compromise through default…
Headline
A Russian national Dec. 4 pleaded guilty to his role in developing and deploying a suite of malware tools known as Trickbot, used to launch ransomware attacks…
Headline
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center is urging hospitals and other critical infrastructure to take…
Headline
Cyber actors attacking the Okta Help Center customer support management system in October downloaded a report containing the names and email addresses of all…
Headline
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, U.K. National Cyber Security Centre and other global partners this week released recommended…