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The Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center  all health sector organizations immediately test and deploy a critical OpenSSL patch when it becomes available Nov. 1, because many of the most common operating systems and applications use the OpenSSL software library for secure communications.

“Once again we have ubiquitous, embedded third-party technology that is often out of view of the end users and cybersecurity teams creating cyber risk exposure for our hospitals and health systems,” said John Riggi, AHA’s national advisor for cybersecurity and risk. “This also highlights the ongoing need for a software bill of materials for medical devices and other pieces of mission-critical medical technology. Identifying instances of OpenSSL in your infrastructure will certainly help expedite deployment of the patch — remember the cyber ‘bad guys’ have the same notice of this vulnerability and now it’s a race to patch, before they exploit it.”