Tag Archives: responsibilities

Healthcare Systems On Edge

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They’re on edge from a plethora of cyber attacks against them.

According to the Institute for Security and Technology, about 300 hospitals have suffered ransomware attacks this year alone. Cyber experts say hackers typically see health care organizations as a prime target because hospitals are likely to pay ransom to keep critical health services up and running.

Two problems are buried in that simple characterization. One is the continued vulnerability of the hospital systems’ IT systems. Why does this vulnerability continue to exist? Charlie Regan, Nerds On Site CEO:

Cyber criminals trying to get into any network or system are incredibly well-funded and incredibly well-orchestrated, and they have a never-ending source of more creative and effective tools to breach systems[.]

Yes, countering, much less preempting, such attacks is hard. But “hard” means “possible,” and the hospital system IT managers don’t appear to be making much effort to get on top of their companies’ vulnerability—those 300 attacks in just the last several months seem to demonstrate this.

But the larger problem in that characterization is that hospitals are likely to pay ransom. Paying the ransom is nothing other than paying the hackers wages for their labor, aiding and abetting the hackers’ crimes, and increasing the vulnerability of others to hackers’ crimes by guaranteeing that their crimes don’t just pay; they’re lucrative.

Given that, I’m having a hard time summoning any sympathy for the hospital systems. They need to start taking their cyber vulnerabilities seriously.

A Curmudgeon’s Take on the Gifting Season

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The headline on Jason Gay’s op-ed on Christmas gifts in Friday’s The Wall Street Journal actually reads,

The Elusive Challenge of De-Escalating Gifts

That’s the point, though. In Gay’s piece, the season isn’t about Christmas, it’s about whether to incur the expense of profligately scattering presents about, with the Christmas season serving merely as backdrop and an excuse for the ostentation, or as a device for crying about the money—and intrafamilial competition—involved.

Gay pretended to considerable angst about trying to tamp down the gifts (with nary a word about Christmas itself), and he offered a number of excuses [sic] for the failure to tamp. A couple were these:

Complete multilateral de-escalation is essential. You cannot have a situation where five people give no gifts, or tiny gifts, and then someone shows up with a wheelbarrow full of Johnnie Walker Blue and PlayStation 5s. If this means impromptu site visits to make sure a relative isn’t secretly stockpiling an illicit stash of Ugg boots, so be it.

No, it isn’t, yes, you can. And no, you don’t have to be intimidated into any spying-on-relatives visits; that’s just cowardice. Instead, it would be easy enough to shame the wheelbarrow-er for his naked attempt to abuse the season to curry favor, or to show off his own ostentatious wealth, or both. If the wheelbarrow-er, in the end, shows himself to lack the grace to be shamed, then he needn’t be invited back the next year.

Ditto grandparents. It’s easier to talk a squirrel off a bird feeder than it is to convince a grandparent not to give gifts to grandchildren. Gifts are what grandparents are for.

Hard means possible, full stop. And no, gifts are not what grandparents are for, no more than wives are baby making machines for those same grandparents. If they’re unwilling to follow the parents’ strictures, then ditto the misbehaving grandparents. They don’t need to be invited back the next year.

Timidity like Jason Gay’s are why it’s so difficult for so many to have a sane Christmas that’s in keeping with the actual meaning of the season, and of the year surrounding it.

Evidence Tampering

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It seems that the House January 6 Committee videos of witness depositions have…disappeared. Congressman Barry Loudermilk (R, GA), House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chairman:

All of the videotapes of all depositions are gone[.]

This is a problem because such videos, being the products of official House proceedings, are records that are required to be preserved, stored, and available. These videotapes in particular, having been created by the last Congress’ House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack in its pursuit of its investigation into the events of January 6, 2021, constitute Congressional evidence and especially are required to be preserved. Yet that committee’s Chairman, Mississippi Progressive-Democratic Party Congressman Bennie Thompson (D, MS), now claims (in his best Johnny Carson impression), “I did not know that.”

Imagine that.

The tampering spreads to Committee documents, also.

[T]he Democrat-led House committee sent certain evidence such as transcripts to the Biden White House and Homeland Security Department and now the transcripts have been returned to Loudermilk’s GOP-led subcommittee nearly fully redacted so their contents can’t be read.

This is Thompson evidence-tampering by destroying the videotapes and Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden aiding and abetting in the crime by allowing his staff to tamper with those documents. Party will protect their members, though, so it’s up to us ordinary Americans to rid ourselves of them next November.

They’re Confessing Their Crimes

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They’re really quite blatant about it, too.

A ransomware gang claimed this past week that it broke into the systems of the fintech platform MeridianLink. The breach has been reported to regulators.
The company didn’t report it, as new rules will require them to do. The hackers did.

AlphV (or Black Cat, depending on who’s speaking for the gang) aren’t the only criminal hackers to do this sort of thing. Other hackers are joining in on telling the cops of their deeds, as a means of pressuring the victims to pay up. Or their security failures will be made public.

Aside from only cowards meekly surrender and functionally if not legally aiding and abetting the criminals by paying, and the situation is straightforwardly enough greatly mitigated by those companies getting serious about their IT security, a separate question exists.

These criminals have all confessed their crimes. Where are the regulators? Where is DoJ? Certainly, it’s hard to identify the members of these criminal organizations, but hard means possible. In the meantime, these crime syndicates can themselves be traced back and their accesses to the Internet hindered severely, if not outright blocked. And their identities publicly disclosed.

What’s He Doing with this Responsibility He’s Taking?

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In a video to staff, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Martin Gruenberg piously asserted that he “took responsibility” for the toxic workplace he has fostered and for his own toxic behavior.

As chairman, I am ultimately responsible for the actions of our agency, both good and bad. I bear responsibility for setting the tone for our culture. … I want to assure you that I’m committed to addressing these issues, including my own shortcomings[.]

Be still, my heart.

But what is Gruenberg actually doing with this responsibility he’s claimed to take? What measurable, concrete actions is he taking to correct those organizational and personal issues?

Gruenberg told lawmakers this week that the investigation and disciplinary process for complaints is typically handled by the legal division, and that the board is “generally kept out of that.”

He’s continuing to not do anything concrete about his toxicity; he’s only yapping. He’s deflecting concrete actions to the FDIC’s “legal division,” washing his hands of the matter. And he’s continuing to refuse to resign over his failures, which seem to me to be irretrievable.

Martin Gruenberg is doing exactly nothing with the responsibility he claims to be taking.