The White House has asked federal agencies to seek increased funding to enhance the nation’s cybersecurity, aligning budget requests with the Biden administration's national cyber strategy and zero-trust architecture goals. A memo from the Office of Management and Budget and the National Cyber Director mandates that agencies update their zero-trust implementation plans and prioritize investments in enterprise-wide cybersecurity solutions. Additionally, agencies must align their budgets with the critical infrastructure national security memorandum, develop minimum cybersecurity requirements, and improve open-source software security. The administration also stresses addressing the government's cyber workforce challenges, advocating for skills-based hiring and removing unnecessary educational barriers.

White House wants to boost cyber funds for fiscal 2026 cyberscoop

Wes Wright, chief healthcare officer at cybersecurity firm Ordr, discusses the critical gaps in hospitals' cybersecurity practices. With extensive experience in healthcare IT, he emphasizes that many organizations are failing at fundamental practices such as network segmentation and having an accurate inventory of connected devices. Hospitals are suffering from ransom attacks, partly due to flat networks that allow extensive damage from single breaches. Wright highlights the need for multi-factor authentication and federal support to help hospitals meet cybersecurity standards, especially for smaller institutions struggling to cover basic expenses. He advocates for better segmentation of systems to minimize the impact of inevitable human errors.

Why hospitals struggle with cybersecurity: ‘We aren’t doing the basics’ chiefhealthcareexecutive

A cyber attack on the Florida Department of Health has compromised the state’s ability to issue death and birth certificates, potentially endangering sensitive patient data. The ransomware group RansomHub claimed to have stolen 100 gigabytes of data, which they threatened to release if not paid, though Florida law prohibits such payments. The attack has crippled the department’s Vital Statistics system, forcing funeral directors to manually complete and transport death certificates, subsequently delaying burial permits and access to benefits like social security and insurance claims. This incident follows prior threats by RansomHub against other health-care organizations, including Change Healthcare.

Ransomware Attack Hits Florida Department of Health Government Technology

Snowflake has implemented a new security policy requiring multifactor authentication (MFA) for all users or specific roles within its platform, following a series of attacks targeting over 100 customer environments lacking this security measure. MFA will now be the default setting for newly created customer accounts, as stated by CISO Brad Jones. The decision comes after an investigation by CrowdStrike and Mandiant confirmed no vulnerabilities in Snowflake's platform led to the incidents. These breaches involved demo accounts accessed with stolen credentials from a former employee. While existing customer accounts can opt-out of MFA, Snowflake is encouraging adoption through frequent prompts and introducing the Snowflake Trust Center and security scanners to enhance overall compliance and mitigate risks.

Snowflake allows admins to enforce MFA as breach investigations conclude Cybersecurity Dive