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U.S. and international cybersecurity authorities this week released additional guidance to help health care and other critical infrastructure leaders defend their networks from Volt Typhoon, a People’s Republic of China state-sponsored group that has been pre-positioning itself on U.S. networks to disrupt critical services in the event of increased geopolitical tensions or conflict with the U.S. and its allies. 

“This bulletin is as much for CEOs as it is for CIOs and CISOs,” said John Riggi, AHA’s national advisor for cybersecurity and risk. “In this alert, the federal government clearly warns us that the Chinese government, through its cyber proxies, is preparing to disrupt the U.S. critical infrastructure we all depend upon, should military conflict erupt with the U.S. and our allies. Health care leaders may want to evaluate and empower development of robust contingency plans for business and clinical continuity should external energy, water, transportation or communications systems be disrupted. Understanding cyber risk as enterprise risk and global strategic risk will help individual organizations prepare for highly disruptive cyberattacks, including those that target mission-critical third parties. Dynamic third-party risk management programs and at least annual cyber table-top exercises are strongly recommended in this heightened cyber threat environment." 

For more information on this or other cyber and risk issues, contact Riggi at jriggi@aha.org. For the latest cyber and risk resources and threat intelligence, visit aha.org/cybersecurity.