“We protect our systems by keeping them up to date,” Brown said. He said any medical device that can’t be updated is completely isolated from the Internet. He said the hospital was given a date when Microsoft would no longer be making security updates to the XP system, so the hospital knew it need to update its systems. He said a recent one involved Microsoft XP.
“I think those two things that have become common practice for hospitals and providers has really resulted in a positive affect for our country and blocked this from occurring,” Brown said.īrown said hospitals use things such as standard firewalls, scanners for emails and Internet scanners that block certain websites.īrown said hospital IT personnel also do things such as paying attention to system updates. He said in addition, in order to keep ARRA funding, hospitals need to do annual risk assessments on their systems. He said HIPPA put in place regulations to control and secure health information and ARRA provided funding to take care of HIPPA.īrown said hospitals across the country have been investing in systems to protect medical records.
“It encrypts all of your files that it can find on your computer and then says deposit money into Bitcoin and we’ll give you the key,” Brown said.īrown said he hasn’t heard of any successes through WannaCry.īrown said hospitals in the United States are not being affected like other countries due to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPPA, of 1996 and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ARRA, of 2009. He said ransomware attacks are a new take on viruses, which try to extort money directly instead of trying to obtain passwords of identity stealing information.
“I didn’t lose any sleep over it because of the preparation that we’ve done is adequate to protect us from this ransomware and other viruses,” he said. Nathan Littauer Hospital Vice President, Information Services and Chief Information Officer Martin Brown said much of that has to do with preparation and laws in place to protect patient information. The next thing the company knows, their data is being held ransom with a hacker demanding money to be paid through Bitcoin, or data will be deleted.Īs ransomware such as WannaCry have created headaches for hospitals and practices in other countries, the United States hasn’t been as affected. Someone clicks on an email and types in a password to a prompt that seems official. The server room at Nathan Littauer Hospital is shown on Thursday.
0 kommentar(er)
