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Education

Philips medical device cyber attack

On August 14th, The US Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control Systems Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) issues two alerts for Philips medical devices: PageWriter and IntelliSpace.
PageWriter TC70 CardiographPhilips announced plans to patch IntelliSpace by October, roughly 45 days from the DHS announcement.

PageWriter will not be patched until “mid-2019” despite the easier, “low level” threat.

A ten month delay provides more ammunition to cyber criminals to aggressively attack healthcare.  Announcing an eight to ten month delay in patching adds confusion into the medical device marketplace. The cybersecurity community expresses the need for clinics, hospitals and health systems that monthly patching is the best way to protect assets from cyber attack. Many medical devices in production at the bedside today remain connected  to Windows XP PCs.

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Education Reading Vietnam War

Latest read: Churchill, America and Vietnam, 1941-45

When did America actually enter the Vietnam conflict? Churchill, America and Vietnam, 1941-45 by T.O. Smith details Churchill’s attempts to influence FDR to permit France to re-colonize Indochina before World War II. Yes before December 7th. FDR authored the US position of a trusteeship regarding Indochina. FDR’s policy intended to deny France their desire to re-enslave Indochina. Was the American nightmare for the faded glory of colonial empires?
Churchill, America and Vietnam, 1941-45Today it may seem surprising the future of Vietnam was debated between Churchill and FDR prior to the D-Day landings. This places a large part of their correspondence well into 1943. Ten years later the French would suffer defeat at Dien Bien Phu.

America would begin deploying troops a decade later. Smith’s previous book Britain and the Origins of the Vietnam War reveal how Churchill’s desire to expand their empire would entangle France and America  across Indochina.

Smith has drawn upon papers from academic studies of Britain and France along with US Presidential libraries. On the surface many point to the Kennedy order placing American troops into Vietnam in 1963. Smith shows how this timeline is backed up to the mid 1940s. The US role is more accurately triggered to the 1954 Geneva Conference following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. Formally US Secretary of State Dulles would return to brief Congress that America would pickup where the French left off to preserve democracy by military means.

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Education Reading

Latest read: Dien Bien Phu The Epic Battle America Forgot

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.
Dien Bien Phu The Epic Battle America ForgotSeveral 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.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Network Ransomware Technology

Harvard Cybersecurity

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.harvard cybersecurity2018 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…

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Education

Nuance: Second medical records breach

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.

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