Hackers impersonated the company’s personnel and contacted its employees to gain access to Astrana Health’s servers.
The post Astrana Health Data Breach Impacts Private, Confidential Information appeared first on SecurityWeek.
Biotechnology doesn’t fall neatly into any one of the 16 government-designated critical infrastructure sectors that receive specialized and focused attention from feds, leading some lawmakers to worry that it’s not getting the protection from cyberattacks and other risks that it needs.
That’s why a bipartisan group of senators and representatives announced legislation Thursday that would place an emphasis at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on defending biotechnology, biomanufacturing and biological data.
The Protecting Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing as Critical Infrastructure Act and the Protecting Biological Data Act are two separate bills with the same group of cosponsors. Both bills would weave biotech into the law that established the Department of Homeland Security.
The former would direct DHS to come up with plans to make sure biotech and biomanufacturing are protected as critical infrastructure, but not as a whole new sector. The plans would identify key biotech players, conduct outreach to them and develop steps to update the National Infrastructure Protection Plan this year to incorporate biotech sector input.
The latter would make sure that systems handling genomic sequences and sensitive biometric data are covered as critical infrastructure and integrated into the national cyber strategy, that CISA would work with biotech players on security steps like joint exercises and that the agency would get new personnel to handle biometric data security.
In the last two months, biotech giants Boston Scientific and Amgen have revealed that they suffered recent cyberattacks.
Sponsors of the measures include leaders and members of the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, a legislative advisory group.
“Biotechnology infrastructure and data are becoming vital to America’s economic and national security,” said Commission Chair Senator Todd Young, R-Ind. “Just as we are serious about where the sensitive data of Americans is stored and who can access it, we should be equally serious about protecting our biological data and infrastructure. Designating biotech as critical infrastructure is about recognizing its strategic importance and making sure the capabilities America will depend on tomorrow remain resilient and protected from foreign threats.”
Notably, however, the bills do not seek a separate critical infrastructure category for biotech to add to the 16. Currently, biotech cuts across a number of existing sectors, including the health, agricultural and industrial sectors.
Some industry groups and experts have lobbied for the inclusion of new critical infrastructure sectors, such as space or artificial intelligence.
“Protecting biomanufacturing infrastructure and the most sensitive biological data of Americans is essential for our national security,” said commissioner Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. “These bipartisan bills will help ensure we are protecting this sector from physical and cyber threats while keeping America as the world leader in biotechnology.”
The bill’s sponsors in the House are Khanna, Stephanie Bice, R-Okla. and Scott Peters, D-Calif., and in the Senate the sponsors are Young and Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.
You can read the text of the bills below.
The post House and Senate members propose legislation for CISA to step up cyber defenses for biotech appeared first on CyberScoop.
In June 2026, hackers accessed files containing patients’ names, contact information, diagnosis details, and health insurance information.
The post 280,000 Impacted by Premier Medical Group Data Breach appeared first on SecurityWeek.
In June 2026, hackers stole personal, health, and insurance information from AdaptHealth’s systems.
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The company has notified the SEC that hackers accessed patient, employee, provider, business, and financial information.
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Hackers stole personal and health information from the healthcare technology company’s AWS infrastructure.
The post 9.5 Million Impacted by Aesto Health Data Breach appeared first on SecurityWeek.
The ShinyHunters extortion group has claimed the theft of 284 million records from the company’s systems.
The post McKesson Confirms Data Breach as Attacker Deadline Looms appeared first on SecurityWeek.
McKesson said its business and distribution centers remain operational in the wake of a cyberattack it disclosed Friday that resulted in data theft and temporary service interruptions.
Attackers gained access to some of the health care vendor’s third-party applications and stole data associated with a subset of customers in the company’s oncology, multispecialty and medical-surgical business units, Francisco Fraga, chief information and technology officer at McKesson, said in a statement Saturday.
McKesson is a major player in the healthcare sector, claiming it distributes about one-third of all pharmaceuticals used throughout North America. It reported $403.4 billion in revenue for the one-year period ending in March.
The company’s size and critical role it serves also makes it a high-profile target for cybercriminals. McKesson did not identify the group behind the attack, but ShinyHunters, a cybercrime group known for targeting large organizations with extortion demands after stealing massive amounts of sensitive data, claimed responsibility.
The company declined to answer questions about ShinyHunter’s claims. Yet, on Friday, McKesson disclosed the attack in a regulatory filing while ShinyHunters added the company to its data-leak site.
McKesson said it discovered the attack Aug. 25. A period of widespread data theft was over by then, following a four-day intrusion beginning Aug. 21, according to researchers.
“Upon discovery, we immediately activated our incident response protocols, launched an investigation, and engaged leading cybersecurity industry experts to support our response,” Fraga said in a statement.
“We have reasonable assurance of no ongoing unauthorized activity in our systems. Customers can continue to connect to and use our systems and services as intended,” he added.
While McKesson’s investigation continues, it faces a more urgent deadline of Sept. 1 from ShinyHunters, which is reportedly seeking a ransom demand in excess of $55 million.
The company did not answer questions about any ransom demand or whether it responded to the alleged attackers.
The circumstances of the attack against McKesson are similar to other recent victims of ShinyHunters. The threat group typically uses social engineering or abuses weaknesses in identity to gain access to cloud-hosted environments containing troves of sensitive or proprietary data, which it threatens to leak if the victim doesn’t pay a ransom.
“Opportunistic data extortionists have been able to identify weaknesses within identity and access management, making these campaigns both cheap and scalable,” said Ian Gray, vice president of cyber threat intelligence at Flashpoint.
“These attacks are particularly difficult to detect early because they often occur entirely within vendor-hosted environments using valid, socially-engineered credentials,” he added. “Since this activity mimics normal support or data-warehouse tasks, it typically doesn’t trip traditional malware alerts or show anomalies, meaning organizations often remain unaware of the breach until the extortionists make contact.”
Researchers have linked ShinyHunters to multiple attack sprees targeting major cloud platforms, including Oracle, Salesforce and Snowflake. The decentralized crew of cybercriminals was also linked to an expansive compromise last summer impacting hundreds of Salesloft Drift customers that put any platform integrated with the AI chat agent at risk as well.
In April, ShinyHunters broke into the systems of Canvas — a central hub for K-12 and university coursework, exams, grades and communication — causing widespread outages and data theft. When an early deadline passed without payment, ShinyHunters escalated its pressure on Instructure, the company behind Canvas, by defacing the platform’s login pages with an extortion message that was visible to hundreds of schools.
Instructure ultimately relented and said it reached an agreement with the cybercriminals, insisting the stolen data was returned with assurances that other copies were destroyed.
The FBI issued a public service announcement about ShinyHunters days later, warning potential downstream victims of the threat group’s pressure tactics and claims.
In late July, less than a month before McKesson was hit, Health-ISAC warned organizations in the sector of an increase in successful attacks by ShinyHunters.
The post McKesson copes with fallout from data theft extortion attack appeared first on CyberScoop.
The cybersecurity incident has disrupted Boston Scientific’s ability to process and ship customer orders.
The post Cyberattack Causes Global Disruption at Boston Scientific appeared first on SecurityWeek.
Nutex Health has informed the SEC that it recently detected unauthorized access and data exfiltration.
The post Sensitive Information Exposed in Nutex Health Data Breach appeared first on SecurityWeek.
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