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Hospitals Should Brace For Surge In Ransomware Attacks
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U.S. hospitals should brace for a surge in “ransomware” attacks by cyber criminals who take computer networks hostage, then demand payment in return for unlocking them, a non-profit healthcare group warned on Friday.
The Health Information Trust Alliance conducted a study of some 30 mid-sized U.S. hospitals late last year and found that 52 percent of them were infected with malicious software, HITRUST Chief Executive Daniel Nutkis told Reuters.
The most common type of malware was ransomware, Nutkis said, which was present in 35 percent of the hospitals included in the study of network traffic conducted by security software maker Trend Micro Inc.
Ransomware is malicious software that locks up data in computers and leaves messages demanding payment to recover the data. Last month, Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles paid a ransom of $17,000 to regain access to its systems.
This week, an attack on MedStar Health forced the largest healthcare provider in Washington, D.C., to shut down much of its computer network. The Baltimore Sun reported a ransom of $18,500 was sought. MedStar declined to comment.
HITRUST said it expects such attacks to become more frequent because ransomware has turned into a profitable business for cyber criminals.
The results of the study, which HITRUST has yet to share with the public, demonstrate that hackers have moved away from focusing on stealing patient data, Nutkis said.
“If stuff isn’t working, they move on. If stuff is working, they keep doing it,” said Nutkis. “Organizations that are paying have considered their options, and unfortunately they don’t have a lot of options.”
Extortion has become more popular with cyber criminals because it is seen as a way to generate fast money, said Larry Whiteside, a healthcare expert with cyber security firm Optiv.
Stealing healthcare data is far more labor intensive, requiring attackers to keep their presence in a victim’s network undetected for months as they steal data, then they need to find buyers, he added.
“With ransomware I’m going to get paid immediately,” Whiteside said.
Courtesy- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/hospitals-should-brace-for-surge-in-ransomware-attacks.html
Are Quantum Computers On The Horizon?
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Austria’s University of Innsbruck claim to have put together a working quantum computer capable of solving a simple mathematical problem.
The architecture they have devised ought to be relatively easy to scale, and could therefore form the basis of workable quantum computers in the future – with a bit of “engineering effort” and “an enormous amount of money”, according to Isaac Chuang, professor of physics, electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.
Chuang’s team has put together a prototype comprising the first five quantum bits (or qubits) of a quantum computer. This is being tested on mathematical factoring problems, which could have implications for applications that use factoring as the basis for encryption to keep information, including credit card details, secure.
The proof-of-concept has been applied only to the number 15, but the researchers claim that this is the “first scalable implementation” of quantum computing to solve Shor’s algorithm, a quantum algorithm that can quickly calculate the prime factors of large numbers.
“The team was able to keep the quantum system stable by holding the atoms in an ion trap, where they removed an electron from each atom, thereby charging it. They then held each atom in place with an electric field,” explained MIT.
Chuang added: “That way, we know exactly where that atom is in space. Then we do that with another atom, a few microns away – [a distance] about 100th the width of a human hair.
“By having a number of these atoms together, they can still interact with each other because they’re charged. That interaction lets us perform logic gates, which allow us to realise the primitives of the Shor factoring algorithm. The gates we perform can work on any of these kinds of atoms, no matter how large we make the system.”
Chuang is a pioneer in the field of quantum computing. He designed a quantum computer in 2001 based on one molecule that could be held in ‘superposition’ and manipulated with nuclear magnetic resonance to factor the number 15.
The results represented the first experimental realisation of Shor’s algorithm. But the system wasn’t scalable as it became more difficult to control as more atoms were added.
However, the architecture that Chuang and his team have put together is, he believes, highly scalable and will enable the team to build quantum computing devices capable of solving much bigger mathematical factors.
“It might still cost an enormous amount of money to build, [and] you won’t be building a quantum computer and putting it on your desktop anytime soon, but now it’s much more an engineering effort and not a basic physics question,” said Chuang.
In other quantum computing news this week, the UK government has promised £200m to support engineering and physical sciences PhD students and fuel UK research into quantum technologies, although most of the cash will be spent on Doctoral Training Partnerships rather than trying to build workable quantum computing prototypes.
Courtesy-TheInq
Courtesy-TheInq
Seagate Goes 8TB For Surveillance
Seagate has become the first hard drive company to create an 8TB unit aimed specifically at the surveillance market, targeting system integrators, end users and system installers.
The Seagate Surveillance HDD, as those wags in marketing have named it, is the highest capacity of any specialist drive for security camera set-ups, and Seagate cites its main selling points as maximizing uptime while removing the need for excess support.
“Seagate has worked closely with the top surveillance manufacturers to evolve the features of our Surveillance HDD products and deliver a customized solution that has precisely matched market needs in this evolving space for the last 10 years,” said Matt Rutledge, Seagate’s senior vice president for client storage.
“With HD recordings now standard for surveillance applications, Seagate’s Surveillance HDD product line has been designed to support these extreme workloads with ease and is capable of a 180TB/year workload, three times that of a standard desktop drive.
“It also includes surveillance-optimized firmware to support up to 64 cameras and is the only product in the industry that can support surveillance solutions, from single-bay DVRs to large multi-bay NVR systems.”
The 3.5in drive is designed to run 24/7 and is able to capture 800 hours of high-definition video from up to 64 cameras simultaneously, making it ideal for shopping centers, urban areas, industrial complexes and anywhere else you need to feel simultaneously safe and violated. Its capacity will allow 6PB in a 42U rack.
Included in the deal is the Seagate Rescue Service, capable of restoring lost data in two weeks if circumstances permit, and sold with end users in mind for whom an IT support infrastructure is either non-existent or off-site. The service has a 90 percent success rate and is available as part of the drive cost for the first three years.
Seagate demonstrated the drive today at the China Public Security Expo. Where better than the home of civil liberty infringement to show off the new drive?
Earlier this year, Seagate announced a new co-venture with SSD manufacturer Micron, which will come as a huge relief after the recent merger announcement between WD and SanDisk.
Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/seagate-goes-8tb-for-surveillance.html
Will A.I. Create The Next Industrial Revolution?
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Artificial Intelligence will be responsible for the next industrial revolution, experts in the field have claimed, as intelligent computer systems replace certain human-operated jobs.
Four computer science experts talked about how advances in AI could lead to a “hollowing out” of middle-income jobs during a panel debate hosted by ClickSoftware about the future of technology.
“It’s really important that we take AI seriously. It will lead to the fourth industrial revolution and will change the world in ways we cannot predict now,” said AI architect and author George Zarkadakis.
His mention of the “fourth industrial revolution” refers to the computerization of the manufacturing industry.
If the first industrial revolution was the mechanisation of production using water and steam power, followed by the second which introduced mass production with the help of electric power, then the third is what we are currently experiencing: the digital revolution and the use of electronics and IT to further automate production.
The fourth industrial revolution, which is sometimes referred to as Industry 4.0, is the vision of the ‘smart factory’, where cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralized decisions.
These cyber-physical systems communicate and cooperate with each other and humans in real time over the Internet of Things.
Dan O’Hara, professor of cognitive computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, explained that this fourth industrial revolution will not be the same kind of “hollowing out” of jobs that we saw during the last one.
“It [won’t be] manual labour replaced by automation, but it’ll be the hollowing out of middle-income jobs, medium-skilled jobs,” he said.
“The industries that will be affected the most from a replacement with automation are construction, accounts and transport. But the biggest [industry] of all, remembering this is respective to the US, is retail and sales.”
O’Hara added that many large organisations’ biggest expense is people, who already work alongside intelligent computer systems, and this area is most likely to be affected as companies look to reduce costs.
“Anything that’s working on an AI-based system is bound to be very vulnerable to the replacement by AI as it’s easily automated already,” he said.
However, while AI developments in the retail space could lead to the replacement of jobs, it is also rather promising at the same time.
Mark Bishop, professor of cognitive computing at Goldsmiths, highlighted that AI could save businesses money if it becomes smart enough to determine price variants in company spending, for example, scanning through years of an organisation’s invoice database and detecting the cheapest costs and thus saving on outgoings.
While some worry that AI will take over jobs, others have said that they will replace humans altogether.
John Lewis IT chief Paul Coby said earlier this year that the blending of AI and the IoT in the future could signal the end of civilisation as we know it.
Coby explained that the possibilities are already with us in terms of AI and that we ought to think about how “playing with the demons” could be detrimental to our future.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak added to previous comments from Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk with claims that “computers are going to take over from humans”.
Woz made his feelings on AI known during an interview with the Australian Financial Review, and agreed with Hawking and Musk that its potential to surpass humans is worrying.
“Computers are going to take over from humans, no question. Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people,” he said.
Medical Data Becoming Valuable To Hackers
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The personal information stored in health care records fetches increasingly impressive sums on underground markets, making any company that stores such data a very attractive target for attackers.
“Hackers will go after anyone with health care information,” said John Pescatore, director of emerging security trends at the SANS Institute, adding that in recent years hackers have increasingly set their sights on EHRs (electronic health records).
With medical data, “there’s a bunch of ways you can turn that into cash,” he said. For example, Social Security numbers and mailing addresses can be used to apply for credit cards or get around corporate antifraud measures.
This could explain why attackers have recently targeted U.S. health insurance providers. Last Tuesday, Premera Blue Cross disclosed that the personal details of 11 million customers had been exposed in a hack that was discovered in January. Last month, Anthem, another health insurance provider, said that 78.8 million customer and employee records were accessed in an attack.
Both attacks exposed similar data, including names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, telephone numbers, member identification numbers, email addresses and mailing addresses. In the Premera breach, medical claims information was also accessed.
If the attackers try to monetize this information, the payout could prove lucrative.
Credentials that include Social Security numbers can sell for a couple of hundred dollars since the data’s lifetime is much longer compared to pilfered credit card numbers, said Matt Little, vice president of product development at PKWARE, an encryption software company with clients that include health care providers. Credit card numbers, which go for a few dollars, tend to work only for a handful of days after being reported stolen.
Anthem Gets Hacked
Health insurer Anthem Inc, which has nearly 40 million U.S. customers, has confirmed that hackers had breached one of its IT systems and stolen personal information relating to current and former consumers and employees.
The No. 2 health insurer in the United States said the breach did not appear to involve medical information or financial details such as credit card or bank account numbers.
The information accessed during the “very sophisticated attack” did include names, birthdays, social security numbers, street addresses, email addresses and employment information, including income data, the company said.
Anthem said that it immediately made every effort to close the security vulnerability and reported the attack to the FBI. Cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc FEYE. said it had been hired to help Anthem investigate the attack.
The company did not say how many customers and staff were affected, but the Wall Street Journal earlier reported it was suspected that records of tens of millions of people had been taken, which would likely make it the largest data breach involving a U.S. health insurer.
Anthem had 37.5 million medical members as of the end of December.
“This attack is another reminder of the persistent threats we face, and the need for Congress to take aggressive action to remove legal barriers for sharing cyber threat information,” U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas and chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement late Wednesday.
Salesforce Goes Healthcare
Salesforce Inc, one of the first cloud-computing companies, is turning its focus towards healthcare with new software and services aimed at the largest hospitals.
Salesforce has announced a strategic alliance with Amsterdam-based medical technology company Philips, which it envisions as the first of many partnerships. These companies will announce two new medical applications later in the summer, called Philips eCareCoordinator and Philips eCare Companion.
The software is designed to improve health and cut costs. The apps are intended to be used by physicians to monitor chronically ill patients between doctor visits.
Salesforce said the goal is to make it easier for hospitals to collect and analyze data from medical devices, which patients with chronic conditions often use at home.
“In the United States, care providers are facing increasing demands and decreasing reimbursement,” said Michael Peachey, a senior director of solutions and product marketing at Salesforce.
“We want to improve efficiency for physicians by transmitting patient data in real time.”
Peachey said the Salesforce software meets security and privacy rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA.
In the short term, Peachey said Salesforce intends to develop additional apps with other partners to help doctors and nurses monitor patients from the comfort of their homes.
“It’s an open platform,” he said.
IBM’s Watson Goes To Africa
IBM has detailed plans to apply its Watson supercomputer the critical development issues facing Africa.
The machine is capable of holding more intelligent conversations than most Big Brother contestants, and in 2011 it beat human contestants on the US TV game show Jeopardy.
However, in Africa it will be used to help solve the pressing problems facing the continent such as agricultural patterns and famine relief.
The initiative, named Project Lucy after the earliest human remains discovered on the continent, will take 10 years and is expected to cost $100m.
“I believe it will spur a whole era of innovation for entrepreneurs here,” IBM CEO Ginni Rometty told delegates at a conference on Wednesday.
“Data… needs to be refined. It will determine undisputed winners and losers across every industry.”
The technology will be used to find ways to enable the developing world to leapfrog over stages of development that have hitherto been too expensive.
One example cited was Nigeria, where two companies have already committed to use Project Lucy to analyse the poorly maintained road system and determine project priorities for repair.
IBM recently announced that it will invest $1bn to spin off Watson into a separate business unit, however this could be quite a gamble as Reuters reported that although Watson has proved to be a quantum leap, it has yet to make any significant money for the company, netting less than $100m in the past three years.
IBM’s Watson Shows Up For Work
IBM’s Watson supercomputer is about to start work evaluating evidence-based cancer treatment options that can be delivered to the doctors in a matter of seconds for assessment.
IBM and WellPoint, which is Blue Cross Blue Shield’s largest health plan, are developing applications that will essentially turn the Watson computer into an adviser for oncologists at Cedars-Sinai’s Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute in Los Angeles, according to Steve Gold, director of worldwide marketing for IBM Watson Solutions.
Cedars-Sinai’s historical data on cancer as well as its current clinical records will be ingested into an iteration of IBM’s Watson that will reside at WellPoint’s headquarters. The computer will act as a medical data repository on multiple types of cancer. WellPoint will then work with Cedars-Sinai physicians to design and develop applications as well as validate their capabilities.
Dr. M. William Audeh, medical director of the cancer institute, will work closely with WellPoint’s clinical experts to provide advice on how the Watson may be best used in clinical practice to support increased understanding of the evolving body of knowledge on cancer, including emerging therapies not widely known by physicians.
IBM announced earlier this year that healthcare would be the first commercial application for the computer, which defeated two human champions on the popular television game show Jeopardy! in February.
Mobile App Locates Cheaper Prescriptions
June 9, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Medco Health Solutions and Verizon Wireless teamed up last month to release a mobile application that aids smartphone users in locating places where they can buy the lowest-cost prescription drugs.
Verizon stated the new Medco Pharmacy mobile app can also identify potentially harmful drug interactions based on Medco members’ medication histories.
Medco, which provides pharmacy services to more than 65 million customers, said its pharmacy mobile app is available for BlackBerry and Android smartphone users. It provides information about out-of-pocket costs for any prescription drug and lower-cost options specific to a person’s prescription drug plan, even if a patient is being treated by several doctors or fills prescriptions at many different pharmacies.