The House has approved a stopgap government funding bill that temporarily extends the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 through December 11, preventing the key cyber law from expiring at the end of September. The Senate previously passed the measure, which now heads to the President for his signature.
Industry groups and federal cyber officials have warned that allowing CISA 2015 protections to lapse could discourage companies from sharing breach and threat information and disrupt real-time intelligence sharing between government and the private sector.
CISA 2015 briefly expired during last year’s government shutdown, and efforts to secure a long-term reauthorization have repeatedly stalled despite calls from the White House and industry for a more permanent solution. The stopgap bill also extends the Technology Modernization Fund and National Cybersecurity Protection System through December 11.
Doc McConnell, Head of Policy and Compliance, Finite State:
“Although it is a positive sign that Congress has extended the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 through December rather than allow it to lapse, short-term renewals are counterproductive to our goals of shared cybersecurity responsibilities and free-flowing threat information.
“The United States has placed a bet that voluntary information-sharing is the best model for collective security. The benefit of pooling threat data means companies can learn from threat activity across the ecosystem and proactively defend themselves, rather than waiting to be targeted individually. CISA 2015 reduces the potential risks to sharing this data by creating liability protections, exemptions from antitrust concerns, and prohibitions on using this data for regulatory enforcement actions.
“Our voluntary approach stands in stark contrast to governments elsewhere, such as the European Union, that have strict mandatory reporting and disclosure requirements. If we want to demonstrate that the voluntary approach can be successful, we need a long-term, predictable structure to build trust. We cannot build that trust if companies expect their risk calculus to change every 90 days.”
Denis Calderone, CTO, Suzu Labs:
“Congress keeps telling us cybersecurity is a national priority and then governing it like it’s an afterthought. This is the second near-lapse of CISA 2015 in a year, and last year’s brief expiration during the shutdown sent legal teams scrambling. Some organizations paused their threat sharing programs entirely until the protections were confirmed back in place. The liability protections in CISA 2015 are what make private sector threat sharing work, and that kind of uncertainty slows down exactly the intelligence sharing that is so needed in the industry. The law has had broad bipartisan support since it was enacted in 2015 and the White House has been pushing for a permanent reauthorization. If you can’t get a long-term deal done on a law that virtually nobody opposes, that tells you everything about where cyber policy actually ranks on the Hill.”
Seemant Sehgal, Founder & CEO, BreachLock:
“Every few months, the industry has to wonder whether the legal framework that makes threat sharing possible will still exist by the end of the quarter. Companies making decisions about what to share and with who are already calculating risk, and this kind of administrative instability changes those calculations before any law actually expires. Extending CISA 2015 to December 11 buys time, but it still doesn’t fix what the recurring uncertainty is doing to the underlying trust that makes information sharing work in the first place.”
Donald McFarlane, Advisory Board Member, Xcape, Inc.:
“It is disappointing that cybersecurity information sharing has once again proved so intractable in Washington.
“I share Senator Paul’s broader concerns about government overreach, but opening voluntarily-shared threat intelligence to FOIA, or stripping away the narrow good-faith liability protections that enable sharing, seems like solving the wrong problem.
“If Washington cannot provide a durable framework for collective defense, it only serves to make private-sector partnerships that are less dependent on Washington look more attractive.”
John Strand, Owner, Black Hills Information Security, Inc.:
“In the early years of computer security, there was a huge reticence to publicly share information about breaches or vulnerabilities in products. Even penetration testing was something that was largely done in the shadows.
“Laws like this helped pull that information sharing out of the darkness. And that sharing is something the entire security industry now lives and breathes on. Researchers share vulnerabilities. Organizations share information about attacks. Security teams share indicators and techniques. That flow of information makes everybody better at defending their networks.
“So I think it’s incredibly important that they extended it. I’m just a little disappointed that this is another short-term extension that only buys us a few more months.
“This shouldn’t be something we have to keep revisiting every few months. It needs to be permanent. We need to make sure the level of information sharing we’ve developed over the past seven or eight years continues without organizations having to wonder whether the legal protections that helped enable it are suddenly going to disappear.”
The CISA does a lot of good work. Honestly, they need to funded in the long term. Otherwise the US is really going to come under threat from a cybersecurity standpoint.
Cyber incidents hit millions of patients, disrupt hospital systems
Posted in Commentary on September 2, 2026 by itnerdA series of newly disclosed cyber incidents is affecting healthcare organizations across the U.S., exposing millions of patient records while also disrupting systems used to deliver care.
Aesto Health has confirmed a breach affecting 9.54 million people and at least 30 healthcare provider clients, making it the second-largest confirmed healthcare data breach of 2026 to date. Hackers accessed Aesto’s AWS environment and stole information that included SSNs, financial account information, medical histories, health records, insurance information and claims and billing data.
Separately, Nutex Health, which operates 27 hospitals and outpatient facilities across 12 states, confirmed that attackers stole patient, employee and healthcare provider information along with confidential business and financial data. The attackers are now threatening to publish the stolen information.
Meanwhile, Luminis Health is dealing with an active cyberattack that has made certain systems unavailable across its Maryland healthcare network, affecting access to some patient services.
Damon Small, Board of Directors, Xcape, Inc.:
“Three separate healthcare cybersecurity incidents in three weeks represent an alarming escalation that directly threatens patient care alongside data privacy. The disruption across Aesto Health, Nutex Health, and Luminis Health demonstrates that the operational risk extends far beyond exfiltrated protected health information (PHI) or regulatory fines. When cyber incidents cut off access to electronic health record (EHR) systems, clinical operations grind to a halt, delaying necessary care and risking patient safety. Healthcare providers have historically viewed IT systems as ancillary, underfunding them both operationally and fiscally. These recent events provide a definitive signal that clinical IT infrastructure is just as essential to positive patient outcomes as doctors, nurses, and medical machinery. To protect patient safety and maintain clinical continuity, healthcare executives must elevate IT security to a core operational priority, enforce strict third-party vendor risk controls, restrict network exposure, and maintain offline, immutable backups.
“Critical Takeaways:
“Treating hospital IT like an ancillary expense works right up until the emergency room is forced back to pen and paper.”
John Strand, Owner, Black Hills Information Security, Inc.:
“I am deeply concerned that breaches of this scale and magnitude aren’t even making it into mainstream media anymore.
“If you go back ten years or so, something like this would have been front-page news. But these breaches have happened so frequently, and the story is essentially the same story repeated over and over again with a different organization’s name attached to it, that I think a lot of media outlets simply don’t want to run them anymore. People don’t click on those articles like they used to.
“And I think that’s where the real danger is.
“We’re becoming numb to breaches of this magnitude. Unless you’re one of the people or organizations directly impacted, a massive cybersecurity breach barely registers on the radar for most Americans anymore.
“That normalization should concern us. The breaches haven’t become less serious. We’ve just become accustomed to them.”
Denis Calderone, CTO, Suzu Labs:
“Healthcare as a sector is having a bad year. Luminis Health in Maryland is the most recent, with systems still down and patients calling a phone number instead of logging into MyChart. The Gentlemen ransomware group is threatening to publish stolen data from Nutex Health’s 27 hospitals. Aesto Health had a breach back in December that took five months to confirm, and the number just landed on the HHS breach portal this week at 9.5 million patients across 30 providers. Two days ago it was McKesson and 284 million claimed records. DentaQuest already set the high mark for the year at 15 million. And this is just what’s making headlines right now.
“The legal and regulatory machinery is now moving as fast as the attacks. Nutex disclosed the breach to the SEC on August 24. A class action was filed in Texas three days later. That’s before the company even finished determining what was stolen. The Aesto breach happened in December 2025, wasn’t confirmed until May 2026, and is now the second-largest healthcare breach of the year at 9.5 million individuals. In April, HHS’s Office for Civil Rights settled four separate ransomware investigations for a combined $1.165 million, and the root finding in every single one was the same: failure to conduct an adequate risk analysis. Data breach class action filings went from 604 in 2022 to nearly 1,500 in 2024, and healthcare is feeding that pipeline faster than any other sector. The window between breach disclosure and lawsuit has effectively collapsed.
“The Gentlemen ransomware group went from emergence in mid-2025 to over 675 claimed attacks, with healthcare as their second most targeted sector. Aesto was breached in December, and confirmation didn’t come until May. Meanwhile, the legal bar for what constitutes reasonable cybersecurity in healthcare is already set, and it’s set by freely available government guidance. Plaintiffs’ attorneys are citing HIPAA Security Rule requirements and published CISA recommendations to establish a standard of care in court. The proposed Security Rule update isn’t creating new expectations. It’s codifying what juries are already being told is the baseline. If your organization can’t demonstrate its meeting that bar today, the breach is only the first problem.”
Healthcare is a sector that is targeted by hackers. Which means that if you are in healthcare, you need to defend yourself accordingly
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