A newly proposed bipartisan bill takes aim at the cybersecurity challenges facing the national suicide hotline, brought to light after a cyberattack led to widespread outages of the system in December.
Dubbed the 9-8-8 Lifeline Cybersecurity Responsibility Act, Reps. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., and Tony Cárdenas, D-Calif., aim to mitigate the potential risk of future service disruptions by mitigating known security vulnerabilities.
The bill comes on the heels of a cyberattack deployed against the telecommunications vendor Intrado on Dec. 1. Multiple unconfirmed reports attributed the attack to the Royal ransomware threat group, which posted Intrado on its dark web leak site in the weeks after the attack.
What is clear is that the incident sparked widespread outages on all Intrado’s services, including the healthcare sector and the national suicide hotline. The company’s phone lines were also brought down during the attack, with customers urged to email or use the chat box for communication.
Although the suicide hotline outage lasted for less than a day, a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson called the disruption “unacceptable” as the line is critical for…
