Latest cybersecurity reporting from selected sources.

Vital Service Providers Need a Plan to Work Through Internet Outages, CISA SaysCritical U.S. infrastructure like water, power and even banking systems will be successfully hacked by enemy cyber warriors in the event of a military confrontation with a peer adversary like Russia or China, officials from the nation's civilian cyber defense agency said.

Signature Healthcare EHRs, Patient Portal Offline; Some Cancer Care CancelledA Massachusetts healthcare system is diverting ambulance patients and is operating under downtime procedures as it deals with a cyberattack. The organization has also canceled certain cancer treatments, taken its patient portal offline and is unable to fill prescriptions at its retail pharmacies.

Medical Device Manufacturer Hack Was Likely OpportunisticAn Iranian cyberattack on medical device maker Stryker's internal IT environment does not appear to affect connected products used by the company's healthcare clients. But an outage of Stryker's electronic ordering system could lead to supply chain issues for its customers.

Iran and its supporters have taken to cyberspace to retaliate for US-Israeli military action, with an aim to cause economic and physical disruption.

Attack enters second day with major disruption to healthcare provision Two hospitals in Belgium have cancelled surgeries and transferred critical patients to other facilities after shutting down servers following a cyberattack.…

IT Systems, Radiology Services Taken Offline; Ambulance Patients DivertedA North Central Massachusetts nonprofit healthcare system with two community hospitals, a medical group and several other care facilities has taken its IT network offline and is diverting ambulance patients as it continues to respond to a cyberattack that hit last week.

Iranian Officials Call Internet Outages Intentional to Disrupt Israeli OperationsIranian officials said widespread internet outages were deliberate and meant to disrupt covert Israeli operations within the country following days of missile attacks from Israel and a rapidly escalating regional conflict that experts warn could trigger major cyberattacks on critical infrastructure.

Catholic Healthcare Organization Took IT Systems Offline in Response to IncidentCovenant Health, a Catholic healthcare organization serving New England and parts of Pennsylvania, is dealing with a cyber incident that has forced the entity to take its IT systems offline, affecting services at several of its facilities. That includes some hospitals and medical testing labs.

Kettering Health, a healthcare network that operates 14 medical centers in Ohio, was forced to cancel inpatient and outpatient procedures following a cyberattack that caused a system-wide technology outage. [...]

IT Outages Are Affecting Patient Services, NC Practice Is 'Temporarily Closed'A small North Carolina radiology practice and a 25-bed Pennsylvania hospital and are among the latest rural healthcare providers struggling to recover from recent cyberattacks that are disrupting their technology operations and affecting patient care services. How will this end up?

Major UK healthcare provider Wirral University Teaching Hospital (WUTH), part of the NHS Foundation Trust, has suffered a cyberattack that caused a systems outage leading to postponing appointments and scheduled procedures. [...]

It's still safe to drink, top provider tells us American Water, which supplies over 14 million people in the US and numerous military bases, has stopped issuing bills and has taken its MyWater app offline while it investigates a cyberattack on its systems.…

The chaos experienced by thousands of healthcare organizations in the wake of the massive Change Healthcare cyberattack and IT outage in February is proof that most organizations are simply unprepared for such devastating incidents, said Bryan Chnowski, deputy CISO at Nuvance Health.

Hospital Chain Advised Business Partners to 'Temporarily' Disconnect During ResponseAscension, a non-profit, Catholic healthcare system and one of the largest health systems in the United States, has taken some IT systems offline and advised business partners to disconnect from its IT environment as it responds to a cyberattack that's disrupting clinical services.

​Ascension, one of the largest private healthcare systems in the United States, has taken some of its systems offline to investigate what it describes as a "cyber security event." [...]

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty Explains the Steps the Company Is TakingLawmakers on Wednesday grilled UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty over security lapses leading up to the Change Healthcare cyberattack and the company's handling of the incident, including the sectorwide disruption it caused and the compromise of millions of individuals' sensitive data.

Company Makes Progress Restoring IT Services, But Disruption LingersAs recovery from its Feb. 21 cyberattack continues, Change Healthcare and its parent company UnitedHealth Group are facing a growing pile of lawsuits, while health sector entities affected by the IT services disruption are dealing with a mounting stack of bills and other paperwork to catch up on.

Also, Senate Bill Proposes Payment Relief for Firms Meeting Cyber 'Standards'A nursing home operator is seeking bankruptcy protection, citing the effects of a ransomware attack last fall and fallout from the recent Change Healthcare outage as factors that contributed to its financial woes. Also, a Senate bill aims to address cash flows for some health firms hit by an attack.

Lawsuit Claims Change Healthcare Outage Is Pushing Clinic, Others Into BankruptcyA Mississippi women's health clinic has filed a proposed class action lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group alleging the disruption in claims processing caused by the cyberattack on the company's Change Healthcare unit and the resulting IT outage is threatening to push the practice into bankruptcy.

Attack on Optum's IT Services Unit Could Be the Worst One to Hit Healthcare SectorAs the fallout continues in the Change Healthcare IT outage, the U.S. healthcare ecosystem is anticipating the next bombs to drop in what's shaping up to be the worst cyberattack the sector has experienced so far. What should entities be considering as they push forward in the recovery?