Something you may have missed this week was that an increasing number of hospitals were held hostage by attacks on their IT departments. The attackers were looking for ransom. It started last month with Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.
Last week there were three more, and this week, a whole hospital chain was attacked by ransomware, this time affecting the servers of 10 related MedStar facilities in Maryland and Washington DC.
Apparently most hospitals have paid the ransom.
Is this extortion or terrorism? Patients probably donât care which. Letâs hope no patients were harmed by the IT outages. The biggest question these attacks on hospitals raises is: Why arenât hospitals better prepared against ransomware? Hospitals are considered critical infrastructure, but unless patient data is impacted, there is no requirement to even disclose that a hacking occurred, even if operations are disrupted.
Computer security in the hospital industry is generally regarded as poor, and the federal Department of Health and Human Services regularly publishes a list of health care providers that have been hacked with patient information stolen.
Onward to the rest of our silly season. Donald Trump had a bad week on the abortion issue:
On the other hand, Trump said out loud what the GOP really thinks:
Ted and Don enter the Rut:
The GOPs self-fulfilling prophecy:
The Democrats have their own dilemma:
It is astonishing that Trump got punished for saying what he did. After all, imagine the first prosecution of an abortion provider (a newly illegal abortion). The woman who had the abortion refuses to testify and is charged with being an accessory. Then her friend (a woman) who drove her is charged with conspiracy.
Sorry – as you suggest, the punishment of women is the result of making abortion illegal.