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Comtec CMS8000<\/p>\nBy Rita Cook
Correspondent
Texas Metro News<\/p>\n
Comtec CMS8000<\/p>\n
AUSTIN \u2013 Texas health agencies were put on notice last week by Texas Governor Greg Abbott regarding potential cybersecurity concerns linked to medical equipment manufactured in the People\u2019s Republic of China.<\/p>\n
The concern is that this medical equipment could be at risk of security breaches.<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s office sent a letter directing state agencies and state-owned medical facilities to address the possible cybersecurity concerns immediately.<\/p>\n
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Abbott explained in his letter that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC), the Department of State Health Services (DSHS), and public university systems were to review cybersecurity and procurement policies and submit findings to his office by April 17.<\/p>\n
He is also requesting recommendations to correct any situations that were identified specifically including how policies address alerts and notices issued by the FDA or CISA for internet-connected medical devices with HHSC are promoting awareness of FDA resources to report cybersecurity concerns with medical devices.<\/p>\n
The necessary outreach campaign to Texas hospitals and other healthcare providers to be regulated by HHSC will be a key component for future awareness.<\/p>\n
Abbott said this latest move was made to protect Texans from data breaches of their medical information.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaintaining Texans\u2019 physical security and protecting their personal privacy, especially personal medical data, is of paramount importance,\u201d Governor Abbott said. \u201cI will not let Communist China spy on Texans. State-owned medical facilities must ensure there are safeguards in place to protect Texans\u2019 private medical data and our critical medical infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
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It was in January; the Trump Administration\u2019s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a series of notices describing security vulnerabilities found in Chinese-manufactured patient monitoring devices.<\/p>\n
The notices discussed at that time were said to confirm the warnings of experts who had elevated the proliferation of Chinese-manufactured smart medical devices across the healthcare system as a serious data privacy concern.<\/p>\n
The Chinese-manufactured patient monitors in question were reported to be the Contec CMS8000 and Epsimed MN-120, which contain cybersecurity vulnerabilities that could allow unauthorized remote access and the exfiltration of protected health information.<\/p>\n
A press release by Governor Abbott\u2019s office noted he had taken significant action to protect Texans from hostile foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party including directing\u00a0technologies to be added to the state Prohibited Technology list to protect state government data.<\/p>\n
He has also signed\u00a0the strongest law in America banning hostile foreign adversaries from buying land in Texas, while creating the Texas Cyber Command, which is the largest state-based cybersecurity department in America to protect Texans from both foreign and domestic cyber threats.<\/p>\n
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There were three executive orders recently signed by Abbott within the scope of the cybersecurity protection conservation as well including the prevention of harassment or coercion of Texans by foreign adversaries, protection of critical infrastructure and the hardening of state government.<\/p>\n
The latter order was directed to HHSC, DSHS, and public higher education systems involving their task to not only review procurement policies to ensure compliance, but to catalog the network-connected medical devices and assess cybersecurity protections at all state-owned medical facilities. These findings will also be used to assist Abbott in the upcoming 2027 legislation session allowing to ultimately validate that Texans are safe from any unprotected medical data by foreign adversaries.<\/p>\n
Rita Cook is a world traveler and writer\/editor who specializes in writing on travel, auto, crime and politics. A correspondent for Texas Metro News, she has published 11 books and has also produced low-budget films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Rita CookCorrespondentTexas Metro News Comtec CMS8000 AUSTIN \u2013 Texas health agencies were put on notice last week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,84157,78321],"class_list":{"0":"post-215258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-gov-abbott-to-require-health-agencies-to-address-cybersecurity-threats-by-peoples-republic-of-china","12":"tag-this-week-in-austin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}