**Hospitals Fought Back Against Surge in Cyberattacks**

As the pandemic raged on, hospitals became prime targets for cyberattacks. The American Hospital Association's national advisor for cybersecurity and risk, John Riggi, explains that much of this activity is driven by foreign-based criminal and nation-state actors seeking to steal sensitive health data.

"One of the reasons they're able to make such money off this is because they're targeting mission-critical, life-critical-type organizations like hospitals,"

Riggi points out that these attacks not only compromise patient data but also threaten human lives by disrupting hospital operations. The shift in perspective on risk has led healthcare leaders and policymakers to treat cyber resilience as a patient safety issue.

"These attacks are not just on the organization; they're on the patients inside the hospital," Riggi says. "And really, they're attacks on the entire community that depends on the availability of the nearest hospital."

**Legacy Technology: A Security Weakness**

The use of legacy technology in modern systems is a significant security concern. Scott Gee, deputy national advisor for cybersecurity and risk at the American Hospital Association, explains that many systems were built with security added after the fact rather than embedded by design.

"What we encourage hospitals to think about now is Secure by Design," Gee says. "That's really how we solve this problem going forward."

**Secure by Design: A New Approach**

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency promotes an initiative called Secure by Design, which aims to prioritize security as a core business requirement. This approach encourages organizations to embed security from the start rather than relying on add-ons.

**Federal Government Takes Action**

Riggi emphasizes that defending critical U.S. infrastructure from cyber threats requires more than just defensive measures – and individual hospitals can only do so much.

"I've publicly encouraged the federal government, regardless of administration, to be more proactive and conduct more offensive cyber operations," Riggi says. "The U.S. government understands that now... especially in the last several months, we've seen an increased tempo of enforcement operations and disruptions directed against the foreign adversary."

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