How to prevent another Change cyberattack

The cyberattack on Change Healthcare has demonstrated the vulnerability of health care systems to more attacks.

By CHELSEA CIRRUZZO and BEN LEONARD
Presented by 340B Health

With Carmen Paun Jenny Kane/AP Photo
03/18/2024 10:00 AM EDT

Health-ISAC pulled quote:

“This is a watershed moment in health care, where suddenly everyone knows now how interconnected, how dependent, how fragile the bigger health care ecosystem is in the U.S.,” said Errol Weiss, the chief security officer at the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a nonprofit that shares cyber threat intelligence with its members.

CYBERATTACK FALLOUT ONGOING — The lingering service outage at Change Healthcare, the nation’s largest claims processing system, is expected to end this week.

But the investigation into how it happened and what can be done to prevent another is just beginning, POLITICO’s Robert King and Kelly Hooper report.

Calls for a probe: Since Feb. 21, a cyberattack on the medical clearinghouse has left health providers unable to submit claims and pharmacies incapacitated. While Change’s owner, UnitedHealth Group, has pledged to fully restore its claims network this week, the devastating outage has sparked calls for an investigation and questions over whether the health industry is prepared to prevent a similar attack.

Cybersecurity experts say the attack has shown the need for a functional backup network that can continue to operate during an outage

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