Cybersecurity in News Article 

It's been a bad week for public cybersecurity

In the past week there have been reports of several types of ransomware attacks against the healthcare sector such as with hospitals. The article discusses three different instances of ransomware breaking into sensitive data held by healthcare providers. On May 7th, Mental Health data was exposed from ransomware attacking NHS Dumfries and Galloway.  This data included information in regard to child patients that were then leaked to the dark web. 

Other attacks include the taking down of Ascension Hospitals network after an attack. NRS Healthcare was also targeted for extortion. While these attacks were against healthcare providers, the affected individuals were the patients whose information was extorted and/or leaked. With Ascension, doctors and nurses were forced to use paper charts and communicate through cellphones alone, making it harder to take care of their patients. A way they could have helped prevent this would be for companywide security training to prevent employees from accidentally downloading ransomware.  

Source Evaluation

• Who published the content? Olivia Powell 

• Where was it published?  Tech Radar 

• When was it published?  May 10th, 2024 

• The truthfulness and integrity of the facts:  Relevant studies were linked within the article and cited, information is backed up well.  

• How is it written and presented? There wasn't a pay wall but the site was a little cluttered with ads, luckily it did not hinder me from accessing the data. 

• Links and Citations: Links to sites that prior reported these attacks and studies such as The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) 

Paris 2024 gearing up to face unprecedented cybersecurity threat

With the incoming Paris Olympics in July, France is having to prepare early for an onslaught of cyberattacks that are expected. In order to prepare for this, they have taken measures with the French National Agency for Information and Security (ANSSI) as well private cybersecurity companies like Cisco and Eviden. 

They are also employing ethical hackers to try and break their way into the system to see how well it might do when the Olympics happen. It appears that they are taking a lot of caution when it comes to protection especially when compared to issues with prior Olympic cyber-attacks.

Source Evaluation

• Who published the content? Julien Pretot 

• Where was it published?  Reuters 

• When was it published?  May 6th, 2024 

• The truthfulness and integrity of the facts:  All facts were backed up with official sources.  

• How is it written and presented? Information was easily accessible and was written clear and concise. 

• Links and Citations: While no links within the article, facts were properly cited so that information could be verified.