Category: Education

Latest read: Dien Bien Phu The Epic Battle America Forgot

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date December 30, 2018

Did the seige at Dien Bien Phu became the single event that catapulted America fully into the Vietnam conflict? Howard Simpson’s Dien Bien Phu The Epic Battle America Forgot may actually be the best book for Americans to understand the significance of the French disaster.
Several books on this battle that I have read over the past two years are well researched, second-hand accounts. Simpson was the single American intelligence member actually within the fortress at the beginning of the siege. Many French officers who were to fight and die over the 59-day siege engaged Simpson during the buildup around the garrison.

By December 1953 French expeditionary forces would number 20,000 men. They would be surrounded by 64,500 enemy.

Simpson captured the futility of the French effort within the opening two chapters. The struggle by the Vietminh to face their colonial rulers must be viewed by Americans in the context of the 1775 American revolutionary war. The determination of the Vietminh proved decisive in this battle.

Tags Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Christian de Castries, french union, henri navarre, indochina, rene cogny, Viet Minh, Vietnam War

Cyberinfrastructure Education Network Ransomware Technology

Harvard Cybersecurity

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date December 29, 2018

Harvard’s cybersecurity course is certainly a demanding slice of your life. However, I gained valuable insights from Eric Rosenbach and cybersecurity leaders from National Security Agency, Akamai, and Google. In addition, this offered me an opportunity to connect with cybersecurity leaders across wide ranging business and geographic locations.2018 proved a challenge, looking beyond repeated megabreaches that dominated news headlines. Did you suffer from breach fatigue? It was like the movie Groundhog Day.

At some point (probably sooner than we think) all the data impacting all the users connected to the global internet will all be available on the dark web. All for a price…

Tags culture, cybersecurity, data breach, healthcare, megabreach, risk management, Technology, tipping point, trends

Education

Nuance: Second medical records breach

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date May 28, 2018

Nuance UPDATE: 2017 Ransomware attacks on Healthcare The impact of last year’s global cyber attacks linger into May 2018. NotPetya wiped Nuance’s hosted services. In late December, they announced a security event. Now we understand it was their second breach.

Nuance Communications deploys very popular medical transcription services. Their US market share at hospitals, clinics and health systems is roughly 70%.

Nuance

However last June the NotPetya global cyber attack erased Nuance’s eScription medical transcription service.

Nuance lost ALL customer data due to NotPetya’s data destruction. Nuance could not restore backups of client data.

As a result hospitals and clinics lost more than 45 days of medical transcriptions which ultimately, led to delays in medical billing. Yet in almost thirty days Nuance was able to rebuild eScription, sans client transcriptions.

Then in December 2017 without any notice to healthcare organizations, Nuance shut down their Apex medical transcription service due to a “security” event.

Tags account management, apex, cybersecurity, data breach, escription, notpetya, nuance, phi

Education Reading Vietnam War Watergate

Latest read: The Pentagon Papers secret history

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date May 21, 2018

The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War by Neil Sheehan and The New York Times is an amazing story. Just re-published in December 2017, Sheehan, was an established, respected reporter on Vietnam. This period was an extraordinary time of change in our country as President Nixon expanded the war in Vietnam.

Sheehan obtained a complete copy of the top secret Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg, a RAND consultant and contributor to the papers. The publishing of the Pentagon Papers would lead Nixon’s re-election committee, somewhat appropriately named CREEP to plan and execute the Watergate break-in. This action was a direct result of the Pentagon Papers leaking, and ultimately, Nixon’s resignation.

However the Papers, initiated by his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara date back to 1945. The initial volumes reveal the American effort to save Vietnam was effectively lost before 1960.

The most striking reports of early failure in Vietnam and Indochina occurred prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and stretched through the 1954 Geneva Conference. This put to rest an notion Vietnam was a development of the Kennedy administration.

Tags dan ellsberg, dwight eisenhower, EW Kenworthy, fox butterfield, Hedrick Smith, indochina, john foster duller, Lyndon Johnson, neil sheehan, new york times, pentagon papers, robert mcnamara, Vietnam War

Cyberinfrastructure Education Milwaukee Ransomware Technology

2018 Ransomware attacks on Healthcare

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date March 4, 2018

The impact of ransomware, botnets and crypto mining will continue to impact hospitals and clinics in 2018.

ransomware, botnets and crypto mining

More precise, targeted attacks including botnets and crypto mining are projected to overtake global attacks hospitals witnessed with WannaCry and NotPetya.

Healthcare Information Security teams must show risk tolerance and carefully monitor new trends in malware, patch management, and change management.

Ransomware via botnets and crypto mining will continue to drive agile healthcare technology solutions, This will impact business shifts in governance and policy across US healthcare facilities as new attacks continue to focus on financial based malware.

Moving into the new year global attacks may give way to targeted attacks, botnets and crypto mining that have been branded as WannaMine.

Tags badrabbit, botnets, crypto mining, cyber attacks, cyberinsurance, ECRI, fda, healthcare, HITRUST, malware, nist, notpetya, ransomware, wannacry, wannamine