About Karen Blum
Karen Blum is AHCJ’s core topic leader on health IT. An independent journalist in the Baltimore area, she has written health IT stories for publications such as Pharmacy Practice News, Clinical Oncology News, Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News, General Surgery News and Infectious Disease Special Edition.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has the potential for trickle-down impacts on U.S. hospitals in the form of cybersecurity attacks.
While there have been no specific cyber threats to the U.S. to date from the invasion, Russia’s attack on Ukraine — which has involved cyberattacks on Ukraine’s government and critical infrastructure organizations — may impact organizations beyond the region, the national Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said.
“Every organization — large and small — must be prepared to respond to disruptive cyber activity,” the agency said. Its Shields Up website includes a catalog of free services to help organizations reduce the likelihood of a damaging cyberattack and ensure they are well prepared if an intrusion occurs. It also contains suggestions for corporate leaders and CEOs and a guide to handle responses to ransomware attacks.
Journalists could find interesting stories by interviewing hospitals about what they are doing to protect their staff and patients, or cybersecurity firms on tips to implement.
The American Hospital Association warned its nearly 5,000 members to increase their defenses against potential Russian attacks and consider blocking internet traffic to and from Russia and Ukraine, John Riggi, the organization’s national adviser for cybersecurity and risk, told Politico.
“Our organizations are continuously being probed and scanned from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea thousands of times a day, literally, whether it’s a small critical access hospital or the largest systems,” he said in the news article.
Riggi will be a panelist at AHCJ’s upcoming Health Journalism conference in Austin, speaking about hospital ransomware attacks and what hospitals can do. The session will be held from 4:40-6:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 30.
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Karen Blum is AHCJ’s core topic leader on health IT. An independent journalist in the Baltimore area, she has written health IT stories for publications such as Pharmacy Practice News, Clinical Oncology News, Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News, General Surgery News and Infectious Disease Special Edition.
In January, nonprofit patient-safety organization ECRI released a report of the 
In recent years, as medical devices have become more connected, cybersecurity experts have sounded the alarm on their vulnerabilities.