Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) recently sent a letter to Nuance, a health care technology company affected by June’s NotPetya malware outbreak, asking for additional information about the incident.
The outbreak affected Nuance’s ability to provide transcription and dictation services to health care professionals. Nuance has said that it has fully recovered from the outbreak.
While Nuance has announced that impacted services have been fully restored, Nuance’s original infection and its effects add to the growing list of concerns about the potential consequences of cyber threats to the health care sector,” Walden said in the letter.
Walden also asked Nuance to provide a formal briefing to the committee in November on the circumstance surrounding the event and the steps the company took to recover and resume capabilities.
“It is important, therefore, for the Committee to understand the details of this event so we can work together to ensure appropriate lessons are identified and addressed,” the letter said. “Learning from this event will not only benefit the health care sector, but also the millions of patients who depend on the availability of its products and services.”
The NotPetya malware strain, also known as Petya and NietPetya, impacted business in a variety of sectors around the world by leveraging a known vulnerability to access systems, which were then encrypted, preventing their owners from using them.