Up to $75M needed to fix up rural hospital cybersecurity as ransomware gangs keep scratching at the door It will cost upward of $75 million to address the cybersecurity needs of rural US hospitals, Microsoft reckons, as mounting closures threaten the lives of Americans. Hospitals are routinely targeted by cybercriminals because system availability is acutely linked to mortality rates, and rural facilities are often the least …
True part: They are in danger of cyberattacks.
Questionable part: The Entra-Azure security direction. Maybe, if the quality gets up again instead of sideways, down and free falling. (Let alone the quality of Windows OS)
The real better direction would be to stay OnPrem, with as least cloud-internet dependency as possible. Working and testing backups. Separation of Networks, to some extend physical level not just VLAN. Etc, you know the drill.
I've done computer work at a small rural hospital (town population < 100). They had computerized billing and diagnostic devices, but none of them were connected to the Internet.
No Web portals, no EMR, no Microsoft Windows. Paper records and x-rays on film. The ultrasound machines had built-in video displays, and could record and display studies to/from WORM discs.
Billing data was transferred to insurance companies via modem connected to their multi-user, SCO Xenix-running PC. Video terminals were on various peoples' desks.
It wasn't the latest-and-greatest setup, but it worked and was extremely computer-cracker/ransomware-resistant. (No open dial-up lines.)
...that the decimal point needs to move one place to the right:
...an estimated $300,000 to $400,000 per rural hospital to raise its security posture to basic standards.
To do the same across all 2,100, it would cost between $700 million and $750 million.
Rationalize this with any reason you want, such as 1) the problem is bigger than we thought; 2) this is taking so long it became bigger on its own as more problems were discovered; 3) government is getting in the way so it took longer, plus more lawyers and bribes lobbies; 4) we needed to hire consultants, et cetera. Heck, let's just round it all up to an even billion.
as a company, making Billions of Dollars every quarter, I'm happy that rather than pointing and going, "Look Bad", you're doing the decent thing and using a tiny fraction of your disgusting profits to pay to help them fix it.
No?
Then fuck off and carry on ripping people off by producing bug ridden software that is the cause of most of these issues.
Rural hospitals close and are never replaced. Literally thousands have been shut down forever over the last 20 years. Some 3rd world countries have better access to medicine that many parts of rural American, and it's been that way for a long, long time.
Spend money to improve.... anything? Bwahahahahahahahaha. Never gonna happen.
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