Explaining CISA's New CI Fortify Initiative for Healthcare and Critical Businesses

When major cyberattacks hit critical industries like healthcare, manufacturing, energy, and finance, they disrupt essential services that individuals and communities rely on. For instance, they can delay patient care in hospitals, halt payment processing, disable power grid management systems, and interrupt fuel distribution, undermining daily life at scale.

To address this growing risk, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) introduced a new initiative called CI Fortify. In this blog post, we will discuss what this guidance involves, how it affects critical businesses, and how a dependable managed security services provider like Techmedics can help you meet this framework.

What is CI Fortify?

Launched in May 2026, CI Fortify is a CISA-backed initiative designed to help critical infrastructure operators in sectors like energy, healthcare, and finance maintain essential operations and defend against nation-state attacks.

It aims to ensure that businesses can continue delivering vital services even when systems are compromised, disconnected from the internet, or operating without third-party vendor support.

CISA’s framework, built for geopolitical conflict, urges critical businesses to plan for the worst-case scenarios. This can include assuming outside connections may be cut off or attackers may already have infiltrated some systems.

To mitigate the risk of downtime and sustain operations, CISA highlights two practical steps: isolation and recovery.

Isolation

This method prepares vital systems to operate independently of internet, telecom, and vendor connections. Doing so helps prevent cyberattacks from interfering with core infrastructure and helps sustain essential operations, even in degraded environments.

When preparing to run in isolation, CISA recommends the following:

Identify essential customers, such as patients, hospitals, military infrastructure, and payment processors. Then, set service delivery targets based on their specific needs.

Identify mission-critical systems like hospital equipment, grid controls, or manufacturing lines, and supporting IT infrastructure, such as servers and databases. Ensure they can function independently even if your external networks are compromised.

Update business continuity plans and engineering processes to enable safe and seamless operations for an extended period while systems are isolated. This could mean running patient monitoring and imaging locally for weeks without cloud support or preparing manual fallback controls to keep power grids stable.

Recovery

Recovery involves documenting systems and backing up important data. It also includes practicing how to replace failed systems or transition to manual operations in case isolation fails and hardware and software stop working.

What’s more, this step means planning for systems that normally rely on outside connections, such as licensing servers or business networks. This way, they can continue functioning even if those connections are removed.

CISA plans to constantly update the CI Fortify framework with new guidance on isolating systems and enabling recovery. It will also perform targeted assessments, identify barriers, and support capabilities to help critical organizations spot weaknesses and build resilience.

Why CI Fortify Matters for Critical Industries

Today, critical industries like healthcare, manufacturing, and energy confront a harsh reality: the risk of nation-state cyberattacks is higher than ever.

In 2021, Colonial Pipeline suffered a ransomware attack, causing major fuel shortages and panic buying across the US East Coast. The attack was carried out by Russia-based group DarkSide during a time of increased global cyber activity linked to heightened geopolitical tensions.

Cyber operations also intensify as a form of retaliation during conflicts. During the US-Iran conflict, nonprofit group Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center urged American health systems to fortify their cybersecurity posture to defend themselves from cyberattacks associated with heightened tensions.

And in March 2026, Michigan-based medtech firm Stryker experienced a network interruption believed to be associated with Pro-Iranian hacktivist group Handala. The attack impacted Stryker’s order processing, manufacturing, and shipping and forced hospitals that rely on Stryker products to postpone surgeries. As a result of the incident, CISA urged organizations to harden their endpoint management system configurations.

A single hour of outage in finance or healthcare can cost millions and even endanger lives. And if hospitals lose records, financial transactions fail, and power grids go dark, confidence in essential services dwindles. With CI Fortify, critical organizations are compelled to find a way to operate even during outages.

How Techmedics Helps You Meet the CI Fortify Framework

“CI Fortify is timely, actionable guidance that helps organizations protect their networks and critical services from cyber threat actors that aim to degrade or disrupt infrastructure,” said CISA Acting Director Nick Andersen.

As such, CISA strongly encourages organizations to review the CI Fortify guidance, implement the suggested actions, and collaborate with the agency to strengthen cyber defenses against opportunistic threat actors.

CI Fortify offers a strong security framework for critical organizations. However, implementing it effectively can be complex. The good news is that a proactive managed security services provider like Techmedics can help critical industries align with CI Fortify. Here’s how we do it:

Isolation Readiness: Our team segments your networks, allowing critical systems to run locally if external connections fail. Local authentication, backups, and offline communication channels are also configured to ensure business continuity.

Recovery Planning: We list dependencies and systems while ensuring backups are tested and accessible.

Dependency Management: Identify external licensing servers, vendor portals, or telecommunication links that could break during isolation and provide local alternatives.

Targeted Assessments: Identify vulnerabilities and test recovery readiness through resilience assessments aligned with CISA’s guidance.

Capability Support: Our team reduces your business’s potential attack surfaces by providing endpoint hardening, timely patch management, and 24/7 monitoring.

Techmedics has the tools to ensure your critical business continues providing essential services, from Dallas and Denver to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Talk to us today for a free consultation.

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