The Joint Task Force on Public Health Cybersecurity, the Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Board, and the Joint Working Group on Healthcare and Public Health Cybersecurity are assessing the current state of preparedness in this key sub-sector to identify opportunities to augment it. resistance to evolving cyber threats.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
The anonymous survey, conducted in partnership with the University of Texas at Austin, will take approximately 15 minutes to complete.
According to Bob Bastani, senior cybersecurity advisor for critical infrastructure protection at the Strategic Preparedness and Response Administration, and Dr. Leanne Field, chair of the public health subsector and executive director of the HSCC, the findings will inform recommendations for grant funding and public health sector policy . committee member of the Cybersecurity Working Group and faculty member at UT Austin.
Questions in the survey included whether a cyber event would disrupt normal processes within the health department, what would be the most damaging loss of public health services to the community served?
“Insight from diverse public health officials, policymakers, practitioners, and information technology leaders in SLTT communities is critical to developing our collective cybersecurity strategy,” they wrote in their announcement.
High levels of survey participation are critical, said Greg Garcia, executive director of the HSCC Cybersecurity Working Group.
“In light of the growing cyber threats facing the sector, this voluntary survey provides a significant opportunity to assess current levels of preparedness and identify areas for improvement,” he said in his report correspondence to health officials, published by the National Association of County and City Health Officials on its website.
Bastani and Field also asked for assist with promotion online surveywhich will be open through Monday, December 2 to public health leaders and practitioners at all levels.
A BIGGER TREND
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ASPR’s parent agency, is centralizing cybersecurity resources it and other federal agencies provide to the health care and public health sectors to assist address cybersecurity threats that have reached epidemic proportions.
Public health agencies are far from immune to cyberattacks on health care, as government agencies are targeted by cyberattacks aimed at financial gain, disruption of services, or both.
In June, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported that it had experienced phishing attack on February 19 and 20, during which the hacker obtained the login details of 53 Public Health employees. The brief attack compromised personal information, including names, dates of birth, diagnoses, prescriptions, Social Security numbers and financial information, of more than 200,000 people, the county said.
Public health cybersecurity preparedness may also be threatened by the development of digital tools such as artificial intelligence.
“What happens if a chatbot from a respected institution starts spreading misinformation during a future public health emergency?” – wondered Brian R. Spisak, healthcare digital transformation consultant, researcher and educator, in a June opinion piece published in .
While Spisak wrote about the potential dangers of the World Health Organization’s generative AI chatbot, introduced by Sarah in April, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity are closely linked, and the exploit of artificial intelligence technology in public health poses risks.
Technology risk management and patient safety threats “are not mutually exclusive, but mutually inclusive,” noted Sunil Dadlani, Atlantic Health System’s chief information and digital officer, at the HIMSS cybersecurity forum in September.
ON RECORDING
“Recognizing that many SLTT communities may not have previously engaged in these types of initiatives, we are reaching out to them to encourage broad participation from the public health community,” Bastani and Field said in an announcement about the study.