Literature Review

Change Healthcare outage: AHA slams UnitedHealth funding program Modern Healthcare - Cybersecurity, by Lauren Berryman; 3/4/2024The American Hospital Association slammed UnitedHealth Group's offer of financial assistance for some healthcare providers in the wake of the cyberattack on Change Healthcare and called on Congress for assistance. AHA President and CEO Richard Pollack said Change Healthcare parent company UnitedHealth Group's temporary loan program misses the mark in a letter sent Monday to UnitedHealth Group President and Chief Operating Officer Dirk McMahon. Pollack criticized the initiative for what he described as its limited eligibility criteria and unfair contract terms and conditions.

Double your cybersecurity spending, CIO warns amid Change Healthcare attack Becker's Health IT, by Naomi Diaz; 2/29/24What does the Change Healthcare ransomware incident mean for healthcare organizations? Doubling your cybersecurity spending, according to one health system CIO. Will Weider, CIO and senior vice president of Wausau, WI-based Aspirus Health, shared five thoughts on LinkedIn Feb. 29 about the incident, saying, "Whatever you planned to spend to improve cybersecurity, double it." Additionally, Mr. Weider stated that in light of this incident, healthcare organizations should: ...

Message from HHS about an ongoing active cybersecurity threat to your IT resourcesEmail from CMS; 3/1/24 Note: This joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) is part of an ongoing #StopRansomware effort to publish advisories for network defenders that detail various ransomware variants and ransomware threat actors. These #StopRansomware advisories include recently and historically observed tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs) to help organizations protect against ransomware. Visit stopransomware.gov to see all #StopRansomware advisories and to learn more about other ransomware threats and no-cost resources.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are releasing this joint CSA to disseminate known IOCs and TTPs associated with the ALPHV Blackcat ransomware as a service (RaaS) identified through FBI investigations as recently as February 2024.

'An attack on the entire sector': Fallout from Change Healthcare hack continues Becker's Health IT, by Giles Bruce; 2/26/24 Change Healthcare said Feb. 26 that it expects the cybersecurity incident that has disrupted its payment and pharmacy processing operations to last at least through the day. The Optum subsidiary has been dealing with the issue since Feb. 21, reporting that it disconnected its systems so its partners, which include thousands of hospitals, didn't have to. The company said it suspects a nation-state was behind the attack.

Healthcare data breaches set record in 2023Becker's Health IT, by Giles Bruce; 2/7/24Healthcare data breaches hit an all-time high in 2023 as cybersecurity concerns continue to plague the industry, HIPAA Journal reported. More than 133 million patient records were breached last year, more than double the number in 2022 (51.9 million), according to the publication's analysis of HHS data.

Coastal Hospice & Palliative Care hit with data breach of patient informationThe Daily Record (MD); 1/23/24Salisbury-based Coastal Hospice & Palliative Care on Tuesday reported a data security incident that involved some of its patient data including certain personal and protected health information. Coastal Hospice has sent notification of this incident to potentially affected individuals and provided resources to assist them.

1 million Corewell Health patients could be impacted by second data breachAnn Arbor (MI) NewsDecember 26, 2023Grand Rapids, MI—About one million Corewell Health patients in southeast Michigan may have had their personal and medical information exposed in yet another nationwide data breach. ... It comes less than a month after a data breach of another Corewell Health vendor that also is believed to have exposed similar personal and medical information of about one million patients serviced by the health system in southeast Michigan. 

Patient data compromised in October cyberattack on HealthAlliance HospitalTimes Union (Albany, NY)December 12, 2023Kingston, NY—The October cyberattack that hit two hospitals in the Hudson Valley gave hackers unauthorized access to sensitive patient data for nearly two months, hospital officials said Monday night, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, lab results and financial information. 

Ransomware group posts stolen Tri-City Medical Center documents to dark webSan Diego Union-TribuneDecember 8, 2023Though Tri-City Medical Center got its operations back up and running 17 days ago, ransomware extortion efforts appear to be ongoing against the Oceanside hospital. Earlier this week, a cyber security expert noted in a message on X, formerly called Twitter, that “INC RANSOM”, a well known group of cyber extortionists, announced its possession of records stolen from the health care provider on the dark web, an anonymous corner of the Internet where such information is often bought and sold.

Corewell Health cyberattack exposes personal data of 1M patientsCrain’s Detroit Business/Modern HealthcareDecember 4, 2023Corewell Health’s Southeast Michigan operations were victims of a cyberattack that exposed the personal data of roughly 1 million of its patients and 2,500 of its Priority Health insurance members, the company announced. The cybersecurity breach occurred at Welltok Inc., a software company that works for many healthcare companies across the U.S., and exposed the data of 8.5 million people nationally, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessell’s office announced Friday.