The Washington clinician said there was a lot
of concern about how to determine whether
or not patients had been exposed to the
coronavirus, the Washington clinician said,
adding that no harm came to any of the 20
or so patients they attended to. However,
anxiety reigned during the entire shift.
Handing off a patient to another department,
always a delicate task because of the potential
for miscommunication, became especially
nerve-wracking.
“We are most concerned with ransomware
attacks which have the potential to disrupt
patient care operations and risk patient
safety,” said Riggi, the cybersecurity adviser to
hospitals. “We believe any cyberattack against
any hospital or health system is a threat-to-
life crime and should be responded to and
pursued as such by the government.”
Ransomware attacks have crippled everything
from major cities to school districts, and federal
officials are concerned they could be used to
disrupt the current presidential election. Last
week, a major supplier of software services
to state, county and local governments, Tyler
Technologies, was hit.
In the U.S. alone, 764 healthcare providers were
victimized last year by ransomware, according
to data compiled by the cybersecurity firm
Emsisoft. It estimates the overall cost of
ransomware attacks in the U.S. to $9 billion a
year in terms of recovery and lost productivity.
The only way to effectively recover, for those
unwilling to pay ransoms, is through diligent
daily system data backups.