Healthcare


  • FDA, Industry Look for Gaps in Cybersecurity

    May 18, 2017

    The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday kicked off a fortuitously-timed public workshop on medical device cybersecurity, the agency’s third on the subject to date. At the workshop, FDA officials, representatives from industry and researchers are trying to determine the current gaps in regulatory science as it relates to cybersecurity with the aim of ...

  • Europol director calls on ‘all sectors’ to take cyber security threat seriously

    May 14, 2017

    The malware attack that paralysed parts of the NHS shows that “all sectors” should take cyber security “absolutely seriously”, the director of Europol has said, Speaking on ITV’s Peston on Sunday, Rob Wainwright warned the healthcare sector “in many countries” was particularly vulnerable, but that all organisations should ensure they prioritised cyber security and updated their ...

  • The government slashed NHS IT security contract despite warnings it would leave systems vulnerable to cyberattack

    May 13, 2017

    The UK government were repeatedly warned that NHS IT isystems were running on outdated operating systems that were vulnerable to attack, yet failed to ensure they were protected. Freedom of Information requests last sumer revealed that trusts across the country were still using Windows XP, despite a government contract with Microsoft to update protections for the system having ...

  • UK hospital meltdown after ransomware worm uses NSA vulnerability to raid IT

    May 12, 2017

    UK hospitals have effectively shut down and are turning away non-emergency patients after ransomware ransacked its networks. Some 16 NHS organizations across Blighty – including several hospital trusts such as NHS Mid-Essex CCG and East and North Hertfordshire – have had their files scrambled by a variant of the WannaCrypt, aka WanaCrypt aka Wcry, nasty. Users ...

  • Cyber security: an ‘indigestion problem’ in healthcare industry

    May 11, 2017

    In August 2011, Marc Andreessen famously wrote an essay in The Wall Street Journal, “Why Software is Eating the World”. It talked about the growing significance of software in business across a wide swathe of industries. Fast forward to the present day in 2017 and we can safely say that the process of eating is ...

  • Prognosis For Healthcare Cybersecurity Is Dire

    April 6, 2017

    On Wednesday (April 5), Terence Rice, VP and chief information security officer at Merck & Co., told the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that healthcare cybersecurity still has a long way to go. “Cybersecurity in the healthcare industry is far worse than what is reported,” Rice stated. Despite the fact ...

  • Internet-Connected Medical Washer-Disinfector Found Vulnerable to Hacking

    March 27, 2017

    Internet-of-Things devices are turning every industry into the computer industry, making customers think that their lives would be much easier with smart devices. There are, of course, some really good reasons to connect certain devices to the Internet. For example, remotely switching on your A/C a few minutes before you enter your home, instead of leaving ...

  • 76 iOS Apps, Including Medical and Banking Tools, Are Exposing Data to Hackers

    February 7, 2017

    Seventy-six popular apps in the Apple App Store are vulnerable to silent interception of TLS-protected data due to a poor implementation of the cryptographic protocol. According to researcher Will Strafach, who wrote on Medium, the apps are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. Data that is normally protected by Transport Layer Security can now be read or manipulated ...

  • Google mistakes the entire NHS for massive cyber-attacking botnet

    February 1, 2017

    Google is blocking access to the entire NHS network, mistaking the amount of traffic it is currently receiving as a cyber attack. An email from an NHS trust’s IT department seen by The Register confirmed that the US search giant has mistaken the current traffic levels for a botnet. The email headed “Google Access” stated: “Google is ...