Hi, I'm Dan Pramak and welcome to Axios Recap, presented by Bridge Bank.

Today's Tuesday, October 6th. Gas prices are down, the U.S. trade deficit is up, and we're

focused on how America's health care system is being held for ransom. Two weeks ago, one of the country's largest hospital chains was hit with the type of

cybercrime known as a ransomware attack.

Then, just days later, the same thing happened to a Philadelphia company whose software

is used in clinical trials, including some that are being used by AstraZeneca to develop a COVID-19

vaccine. So what's a ransomware attack? In short, it's when a hacker illegally accesses a system

and encrypts the data inside. The hacker then offers to basically sell the organization a so-called

encryption key to unlock its own data. That's the ransom.

For time-sensitive outfits like hospitals, this can be absolutely devastating. Take that Philadelphia

software company called e-research technology. Its attack led trial researchers to be locked out of

their own information and force them to begin tracking patients in notebooks, pen and

paper, longhand. And then there was a ransomware attack at a German hospital recently that

resulted in an actual death. When the hospital system went down, it began turning away ER patients,

and one woman died from treatment delays after being shuttled to a working hospital

20 miles away. Overall, there have been hundreds of ransomware attacks against U.S. health

companies in the past 18 months. And just to add insult to literal injuries, many of those

companies pay the ransoms, thus indirectly leading to increased health care costs for all of us.

So we want to dig into this with New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perl Roth,

who broke the news of the attack on e-research technology.

That conversation in 15 seconds.

We're joined now by Nicole. in 15 seconds.

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