The questions health system CIOs have after the global IT outage
Becker's Hospital Review
|
Contributed by: Drex DeFord
Summary
Duke University Health System, along with other healthcare systems globally, experienced a significant IT outage on July 19 due to a faulty update from CrowdStrike, a prominent cybersecurity vendor. The disruption caused tens of thousands of workstations to display blank blue screens, directly impacting hospital operations and patient care systems. By activating incident command protocols and deploying a massive joint effort between IT and operational staff, most affected health systems restored patient services by July 22. The incident highlighted the critical reliance on third-party vendors and underscored the need for rigorous cybersecurity measures, including redundancy, vendor security evaluations, and comprehensive incident response planning. The event's resolution involved detailed manual intervention and coordination to mitigate the impact on healthcare delivery.
