Get ready for an engaging and insightful experience at the Rural Health Leaders – Strengthening Rural Conference, taking place June 25–26! Hosted by SDAHO, this event brings together healthcare professionals, policymakers, and industry leaders to address the evolving challenges and opportunities within rural health care.
This year’s conference agenda includes a timely focus on cybersecurity, a growing concern for hospitals and healthcare systems nationwide. Scott Gee, from the American Hospital Association (AHA) and Laura Kreofsky from Microsoft, will present practical strategies for protecting rural health systems from cyber threats and building resilience against ransomware and data breaches.
According to the FBI’s 2024 Internet Crime Report, released April 23, the health care sector experienced more cyberattacks than any other critical infrastructure industry last year. The report documented 444 cyber incidents impacting healthcare—238 involving ransomware and 206 classified as data breaches. Only the critical manufacturing sector had more ransomware incidents (258), but significantly fewer data breaches (71).
“It’s not surprising that the report shows health care suffered the highest combined total of ransomware and data theft attacks of any U.S. critical infrastructure sector,” said John Riggi, AHA’s National Advisor for Cybersecurity and Risk. He added, “In 2024 alone, health care made 592 regulatory filings for reported cyberattacks on protected health information to the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, affecting a record 259 million Americans—the majority due to the Change Healthcare ransomware attack, which exposed data for 190 million individuals.”
Riggi noted consistent trends over the past three years, pointing out that most patient records have been stolen from third-party vendors rather than directly from hospitals. Most ransomware attacks have been traced to Russian-speaking groups using social engineering, stolen credentials, and unpatched system vulnerabilities to gain access. Still, Riggi emphasizes the increasing collaboration and information sharing across the healthcare sector to mitigate these threats and strengthen clinical continuity. (AHA News, May 12, 2025)
To learn more about cybersecurity threats and solutions in health care, visit aha.org/cybersecurity. For more information and to register for SDAHO’s Rural Health Leaders Conference, click click here.
