CIS Program Offers Malicious Domain Name Blocking and Reporting, Powered by Akamai, for Free to Private Hospitals
Carahsoft Technology Corp., The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider, announced that Akamai’s Enterprise Threat Protector (ETP) has been selected by the Center for Internet Security (CIS) to provide a carrier-grade recursive Domain Name System (DNS) through CIS’ Malicious Domain Name Blocking and Reporting (MDBR) program to private hospitals at n******.
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MDBR is fully funded by a $1 million investment from CIS as a complement to a similar federally funded pilot program CIS manages for public hospitals that are members of the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC). Akamai’s ETP provides an additional layer of cybersecurity protection that is proven, effective and easy for organizations to deploy.
The technology, which is built on the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform, proactively prevents enterprises, workers and systems from connecting to harmful web domains, helping to limit infections related to known malware, ransomware, phishing and other cyber threats. This capability can block the vast majority of ransomware infections just by preventing the initial outreach to a ransomware delivery domain.
Ransomware has emerged as one of the largest cyber threats to U.S. hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. In October 2020, the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Health and Human Services (HHS), and the FBI issued a joint advisory around an increased and imminent threat of ransomware attacks that could result in data theft and the disruption of healthcare services.
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“Today’s threat landscape has increased dramatically in terms of sophistication and scope over the last year, making it all the more important for hospitals to defend their patients, employees and systems,” said Michael Shrader, Vice President of Intelligent and Innovative Solutions at Carahsoft, which provides Akamai ETP to CIS for both its public and private sector hospital programs. “Akamai offers a platform with the right combination of innovative technology, along with the ability to scale quickly that will offer enhanced security for hospitals and help ensure continuity of operations.”
In response to the heightened cyber threat against the healthcare system and the crucial importance of protecting and maintaining continuity of patient care and operations, CIS is providing this service immediately at n****** to a wide range of U.S.-based healthcare organizations, including independent hospitals; multi-hospital systems; hospital-based integrated health systems; post-acute patient care facilities; and psychiatric, rehabilitation, and other specialty hospitals.
“CIS is offering this defensive solution as part of our mission to make the connected world a safer place,” said Ed Mattison, CIS Executive Vice President, Operations and Security Services. “Our board made the decision to fully fund this program ourselves at n******, and with n****************** for hospitals in the U.S. because a powerful, easy to implement solution is critically needed to protect our healthcare system.”
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From its inception, CIS reports the following progress:
- As of March 31, 2021, 1,644 U.S. State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Government organizations were reporting success with Akamai technology through the MS-ISAC MDBR pilot program.
- At the end of March 2021, MDBR had blocked more than 1.2 Billion requests to known bad web domains for public sector members since its inception.
- Participating public healthcare organizations reported a combined total of 216,286 blocked DNS requests from July 2020 to March 2021.
- As of March 31, 2021, 49 U.S. private healthcare organizations, and 15 U.S. public healthcare organizations were using the MDBR program.
- Participating private healthcare organizations reported a combined total of 32.3 Million blocked DNS requests from February 16, 2021 to March 31, 2021.
- The most common blocked activities for public health organizations as of March 2021, involved Malware (96.53%) and Phishing (3.1%).
- The most common blocked activities for private healthcare organizations as of March 2021, were Command & Control (68.83%) and Malware (23.66%).
“The Akamai Enterprise Threat Protector service was designed to provide a quick and simple way for organizations to add an additional layer of proactive security by leveraging our edge platform and real-time threat intelligence based on our unprecedented visibility of DNS traffic,” said Jonathan Morgan, Vice President, Network Security Product Management, Akamai. “The fact that CIS was able to fund this program at n****** to private hospitals is a game changer in helping these organizations to quickly and easily improve their security posture.”
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