The new, no-cost initiative aims to stop cyber attackers before hospitals face a data breach.

Holiday weekends are prime time for cyberattacks, particularly for healthcare organizations, so to counter this growing threat, Celerium announced the launch of its first-ever Data Breach Weekend Watch for Memorial Day weekend. 

This initiative is designed to help hospitals and healthcare organizations detect and respond to cyber threats during long weekends—when breaches are most likely to go unnoticed due to reduced staffing.

Celerium’s Memorial Day Data Breach Weekend Watch provides individual protections and community-wide visibility and defense coordination. The program is part of Celerium’s no-cost 2025 Data Breach Defense Program, currently supporting a network of 40-plus US healthcare organizations that have been accepted into the program. It targets high-risk cyberattack times like Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day when hospitals are most vulnerable to data breach activity.

“The Data Breach Weekend Watch offers extra protection for healthcare organizations during high-risk periods like holiday weekends,” says Vince Crisler, chief strategy officer at Celerium and former White House CISO, in a release. “Our no-cost program is a valuable opportunity for eligible organizations to strengthen their cybersecurity posture—especially ahead of Memorial Day and other upcoming holidays when threats tend to rise.”

Holiday Weekends Pose Heightened Risks for Healthcare Systems

Data breaches can strike at any time—but holidays are especially dangerous, according to a release from Celerium. Cyber attackers know that staff levels drop and response times slow. Celerium’s Data Breach Defender is available year-round to help prevent, detect, and contain data breaches. But during key holiday periods, the Data Breach Weekend Watch initiative adds extra vigilance to protect the community.

According to IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach report, 24% of data breaches are never discovered by the victims themselves—they’re only alerted by the attackers.

What the Weekend Watch Includes

For Memorial Day, hospitals participating in Celerium’s Data Breach Defense Program are offered both individual protections and community-wide visibility and defense coordination.

Individual hospital protections:

  • Optional prevention and early-stage breach alerts for hospitals
  • Executive IT data breach impact dashboard

Community-wide threat monitoring:

  • Pre-weekend virtual briefing and mid-weekend update hosted by Celerium’s Vince Crisler, former White House CISO, and top healthcare CISO Jeffrey Vinson
  • Holiday-specific readiness checklists for IT and risk executives

Future Weekend Watches are already planned for July 4th, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving, expanding Celerium’s vision of a Data Breach Network tailored for the healthcare sector.

Data Breach Defender for Urgency

The Memorial Day Weekend Watch is powered by Celerium’s Data Breach Defender, a cloud-based cybersecurity solution originally developed for the US Department of Defense and now purpose-built for healthcare.

It is designed to help hospitals and healthcare organizations:

  • Prevent, detect, and contain early-stage data breaches
  • Deploy in under 30 minutes, with no new hardware or software installation required
  • Support understaffed IT teams