HHS Provides Health Sector With Resources to Combat Cyber Threats

The  Cybersecurity Task Force of the Department of Health and Human Services has provided the health care and public health sector with an online educational platform and two other resources for addressing cybersecurity threats.

The Knowledge on Demand education platform offers five cybersecurity training programs: social engineering, ransomware, loss or theft of equipment or data, insider accidental or malicious data loss, and attacks against network-connected medical devices, HHS said. The platform includes multiple delivery methodologies tailored to health care facilities of various sizes.

The agency also released the 2023 edition of Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices and the Hospital Cyber Resiliency Initiative Landscape Analysis report. HICP was updated with support from 150 industry and federal professionals to include recommendations on how to enhance cybersecurity and counter social engineering attacks, which the document identified as one of the top five threats facing the sector.

The Hospital Cyber Resiliency Initiative Landscape Analysis, meanwhile, gives an overview of the current state of domestic hospitals’ cybersecurity posture and contains a review of the compliance of participating hospitals with standard cybersecurity guidelines, including HICP 2023. It analyzes data gathered from health organizations to identify best practices and opportunities for cyber resiliency improvements.