If hospitals want to reduce the odds of major disruptions from ransomware attacks, Steve Cagle says they need to understand the risks.
Cagle, the CEO of Clearwater, a cybersecurity company, recently spoke with Chief Healthcare Executive®. He says hospital boards and their CEOs must be engaged in cybersecurity, and that healthcare organizations must engage in an ongoing effort to improve their defenses.
Scores of health systems and hospitals have been hit with ransomware attacks, which threaten patient safety and incur enormous costs, both financially and to the reputation of an organization.
“And at some point, there’s a line that has to be drawn somewhere,” Cagle says. “How much risk are we willing to accept?”
Health systems looking to bolster their cybersecurity defenses are likely going to have to invest more money, and Cagle acknowledges that can be a difficult choice for hospitals.
Hospital leaders need to ensure that cybersecurity is an organization-wide priority, and it can’t be relegated to information technology departments, Cagle suggests.
Hospitals need to do more than implement tools to deter cyberattacks, Cagle says. They need to test those defenses.
“We see a lot of controls, a lot of tools that have been put in place,” Cagle says.
“What we haven’t seen enough of is actually testing those putting those to the test to see if they work,” he adds.
Cagle calls for continual testing of cybersecurity tools and training of employees.
“That’s how organizations will get better, is understanding where where the high risks are, focusing efforts there, putting the controls in place, testing the controls, making sure that you’re raising awareness throughout the organization, so that people are aware of those situations that get through right, the phishing email, the social engineering, and just leveraging all the resources in the most optimal way to to reduce risk,” he said.
Healthcare organizations have demonstrated a greater awareness of the risk of cybersecurity in recent months, although they still have work to do, Cagle says. He’s especially encouraged by the greater focus on the risks of cyberattacks to patient care, including the disruption of electronic…
It might seem like a paradox, but coal might hold the answer to solving carbon emission problems. The key isn’t burning it, but creating it using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. While this has always been possible in theory, high temperatures make it difficult in practice. However, a recent paper in Nature Communications shows how a special liquid metal electrocatalyst can convert the gas into a solid form of carbon suitable for, among other things, making high-quality capacitor electrodes. The process — you can see more about it in the video below — works at room temperatures.
It isn’t that hard to extract carbon dioxide from the air, the problem is what to do with it. Storing it as a gas or a liquid is inefficient and expensive, while converting it to a solid makes it much easier to store or even reuse for practical applications.
The liquid metal catalyst is gallium-based and contains, among other things, metallic cerium nanoparticles. The liquid metal resists coking — the coating of the catalyst with the carbon material produced.
The process doesn’t produce coal lumps suitable for bad children’s stockings. Rather, it creates flakes about 3 nm thick. We’ve seen proposals for growing carbon nanofibers out of the air, but that takes high temperatures. Maybe the technology could make diamond batteries and kill two problems with one stone.
Montreal Gazette |
Computer Security: Reducing Risks of Malware Infections
Science Daily (press release) 16, 2013 — Installing computer security software, updating applications regularly and making sure not to open emails from unknown senders are just a few examples of ways to reduce the risk of infection by malicious software, or "malware." However … Savvy computer users pose security risk: study How human behavior affects malware and defense measures |
