New $50M HHS program seeks to bolster hospital cybersecurity

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has introduced the new Universal PatchinG and Remediation for Autonomous DEfense program, which offers $50 million toward the strengthening of hospital cybersecurity amid growing cybersecurity threats, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

Led by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, the new UPGRADE program seeks to obtain proposals that would lead to the development of an automated vulnerability detection system and vulnerability mitigation software for healthcare, as well as automated custom cyber defenses for hospitals and digital hospital equipment replicas.

“UPGRADE will speed the time from detecting a device vulnerability to safe, automated patch deployment down to a matter of days, providing confidence to hospital staff and peace of mind to the people in their care,” said ARPA-H Director Renee Wegrzyn.

Such a development comes weeks after a cyberattack against Ascension, which is the largest Catholic nonprofit health system in the U.S.