HHS's Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has announced the winners of their Move Health Data Forward Challenge, which focused on the development of applications for secure sharing of patient health information and awarded winners $50,000.

Medical device technology has brought an improved sense of care to healthcare organizations, yet also bring along the risk of a data breach when not maintained. A new survey by Ponemon Institute, an information technology research organizations, found medical devices to be especially susceptible to attack.

After the WannaCry ransomware attack in mid-May, interest in cyber security across all industries has spiked. A survey conducted by Carbon Black included interviews with 5,000 people to evaluate the public’s perception of ransomware.

Managed care and Affordable Care Act exchange insurer Molina Healthcare has shut down its online patient portal after a potential data breach may have exposed protected health information for millions of customers.

A spokesperson from Bayer has revealed two reports of U.S. customers having devices infected by the WannaCry ransomware. 

The main responsibility of chief information officers (CIOs) is to implement technology within their healthcare system to improve patient care while keeping data secure. A recent survey, conducted by CHIME and presented by Spok, analyzes exactly what hospital CIOs think about data security and clinical mobility.

Healthcare remains relatively weak in securing information storage. A study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and Metalogix, regarding how organizations store confidential data and use file sharing environments such as SharePoint, outlined major developments in the improvement of cyber security. 

In a recent Forbes article, Thomas Fox-Brewster, discusses how WannaCry ransomware infected as many as 200,000 Windows systems, including a handful of medical facilities in the U.S.