The Biden administration is looking to introduce a policy that will require US hospitals to meet a certain level of digital security, including multi-factor authentication, in order to secure federal funding.
A number of attacks in recent months have severely impacted hospitals, forcing ambulances to be diverted and non-urgent procedures to be rescheduled.
Hospitals are already bound by a number of requirements relating to building construction, security and how patients are treated in order to secure funding.
Hospitals are lucrative targets for ransomware attacks due to the sensitivity and amount of data stored on their systems, and often lack the robust security structure needed to keep cybercriminals out of their systems. The increasing complexity and number of network enabled devices used in medical procedures and patient care increases the vulnerability of hospitals to cyber attacks.