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The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI, Australian Cyber Security Centre, and United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre today released an advisory detailing the top 30 cyber vulnerabilities in 2020 and 2021. 

“Organizations are encouraged to remediate or mitigate vulnerabilities as quickly as possible to reduce the risk of exploitation,” the advisory states. “Most can be remediated by patching and updating systems. Organizations that have not remediated these vulnerabilities should investigate for the presence of [indicators of compromise] and, if compromised, initiate incident response and recovery plans.”

John Riggi, AHA senior advisor for cybersecurity and risk, said, “This advisory is very important for a number of reasons. First, it clearly demonstrates that our cyber adversaries are most likely to exploit well-known vulnerabilities for which patches already exist. They are simply trying to beat us in the never-ending race to patch. This advisory also highlights the necessity of having an effective patch management program, especially as it relates to medical devices. On the plus side, this rare joint U.S., U.K. and Australian cyber advisory demonstrates the significantly increased level of cooperation and intelligence exchange in cyber defense among allied nations. No doubt the information contained in this advisory is of high confidence and should be acted upon immediately.”

For further information on this or other cyber and risk issues, contact Riggi at jriggi@aha.org.