Agencies recommend action to defend Ivanti VPN gateways from compromise

U.S. and international agencies Feb. 29 urged health care and other critical infrastructure organizations using Ivanti Connect Secure VPN and Ivanti Policy Secure to take certain steps to defend against known cyber threats that Ivanti’s Integrity Checker Tool may fail to detect.

“Perhaps the most important point to mention at this moment is that we do not have any indication this alert is in any way related to the Change Healthcare breach,” said John Riggi, AHA’s national advisor for cybersecurity and risk. “Nevertheless, this remains a significant threat being actively exploited by sophisticated foreign adversaries targeting previously published vulnerabilities in the Ivanti Connect Secure VPN and Policy Secure services. According to the alert, threat actors are able to bypass authentication controls and maintain undetected, root-level persistent access. The alert references multiple cyber threats related to the Chinese government. Organizations still using these Ivanti services should implement described patches and consider the significant risk of adversary access to, and persistence on, Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure gateways when determining whether to continue operating these devices in an enterprise environment.”

For more information on this or other cyber and risk issues, contact Riggi at jriggi@aha.org. For the latest cyber and risk resources and threat intelligence, visit aha.org/cybersecurity.