Tag Archive for: golden

Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Golden talks global challenges of ransomware

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This month, the Mid-Coast Forum on Foreign Relations hosted journalist and author Daniel Golden to discuss the global challenge of ransomware.

headshot of Dan Golden

Daniel Golden

The Mid-Coast Forum on Foreign Relations seeks to promote study and discussion of the development, formulation, and implementation of United States foreign policies by means of a program of speakers, the organization of discussion and study groups, and the production and distribution of relevant materials.

Golden, currently a senior editor and reporter at ProPublica, has been part of three Pulitzer Prize teams at the Wall Street Journal, ProPublica and Bloomberg.

He has notably reported on the topics of college admissions, recruitment by universities, asylum-seekers, corporate tax evasion, the U.S. intelligence agencies, and ransomware.

Listen to the talk at: Midcoast Forum, Daniel Golden, December 2022.

Those interested in learning more about the Forum or seeing future speaker events can visit midcoastforum.org. The Maine Monitor will periodically share recordings of the Forum’s talks.

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Compliance with July 1 CMS Interoperability Rule Deadline May Pose Ransomware Risk | Arnall Golden Gregory LLP

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In recent months, the word “ransomware” has moved from a topic discussed only among cybersecurity professionals to a term used at dinner tables and water coolers across the country. Simultaneously, in the healthcare space, hospitals, healthcare systems, and payers are scrambling to meet the July 1, 2021 deadline for the first wave of interoperability and patient access requirements included in the final rule issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in June of 2020.

As system interoperability and connectivity increase, so does the risk of ransomware. Cybersecurity experts agree that one of the initial defenses against widespread ransomware is via network segmentation. Segmenting a network means, for example, ensuring that an organization’s IT environment is created in a manner where patient-facing technology does not interact with software running medical equipment. However, compliance with the Interoperability and Patient Access final ruling significantly impairs an organization’s ability to segment its network and exposes the organization to an increased risk of ransomware attacks.

To mitigate some of the risks while still complying with the Interoperability and Patient Access rule, we suggest companies do the following:

  • Frequent Backup – the more frequently data is backed up, the less power ransomware has over an organization. Losing an hour of data is much less harmful than losing a month.
  • Segmented and Encrypted Backup Encryption – although the rule makes it difficult to segment production environments, it does not prevent segmenting backup data. Companies should ensure that the backups are also encrypted to provide an additional layer of defense.
  • Thorough Vendor Review – an organization’s security is only as strong as its weakest link, and no complex healthcare ecosystem can exist without the use of third-party vendors. Therefore, vendors should be thoroughly vetted and investigated prior to onboarding to ensure that the security procedures do not introduce unnecessary risk into the technology environment.
  • Scoping for Clarity, Cooperation, and Root Cause Analysis – ensure that each of your vendors has an obligation to cooperate with both…

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Owner of failed nuclear plant might use golden parachute fund in settlement

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A nuclear plant in a grassy field during the summer.

Enlarge / V C Summer Nuclear Station Unit 1. (credit: DJSlawSlaw / Wikimedia Commons)

Today, South Carolina energy company SCANA and its potential purchaser Dominion Energy reached a settlement with class-action litigants to offer a significant energy bill rate cut in exchange for the litigants dropping a lawsuit over $ 2 billion in energy bill fees. Attorneys for the class-action members told The Post and Courier that they will accept the deal if it’s approved.

SCANA was a 55-percent owner of the VC Summer nuclear power plant expansion, and when reactor maker Westinghouse went bankrupt early last year, the owners of the plant found themselves in a very bad position.

Stakeholders opted not to continue construction on Summer, unlike in Georgia, where a similar reactor construction project from Westinghouse found the public support to fulfill construction. Meanwhile, SCANA and its public-facing utility, South Carolina Electric and Gas (SCG&E), still found themselves on the hook after massive cost overruns. Customer energy bills subsidized the billions of dollars of construction that would ultimately go nowhere.

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