Cyberattacks persist to plague hospitals, among other members of the healthcare community, at alarming rates.
Remember earlier this year when hospitals and clinic waiting rooms were inundated with patients reporting flu-like symptoms. Thankfully for flu season, the flu virus is winding down for the year.
But when it comes to cyberattacks, there is no stop.
Cybercriminals are hungry. They know medical records are invaluable pieces of information and will work hard to either ransom or steal your PHI. Did you know that one little medical record is worth over $1200? The current rate on the Dark Web for a medical record is more than ten times more valuable than a credit card number.
Why?
Different government agencies, along with insurance providers and billers are slow to detect fraud in the healthcare system. And there are so many people unwilling or unable to pay for expensive procedures, they’d rather procure someone else’s identity and fraudulently have a procedure on their dime. Hip replacement too expensive? Why not purchase an identity for a thousand bucks and limit the cost? Since healthcare is expensive, it’s become very tempting for even those of us with good intentions to find alternative ways to pay for procedures that might bankrupt us otherwise.
Today I want to walk through a few ways that cybercriminals are attacking healthcare and a few tips on how to keep your hospital secure from cyberattacks and ransomware.
Extortion attacks—ransomware attacks have been plaguing hospitals for some time now. With Samsam ransomware attacks hitting hospitals and EHR systems, alike, it’s become hard not to find another story of a ransomed hospital in the news each week. With personal and sensitive information held hostage, hospitals have frequently been put in between a rock and a hard place as to paying off ransoms or risking their data going public.
Criminals are resorting to a procedure cybersecurity experts are coining doxxing. When a cybercriminal encrypts the files on a hospital network, they are now threatening to publish all of the sensitive information held within those files if their ransom isn’t paid. Previously, criminals were simply encrypting networks with no further action. But since many hospitals are questioning paying the hefty ransom notes (which typically run well over $30K), criminals have learned that they have to ante up on their threats.
The problem, as you can surmise, with publicly releasing hospital files is the risk of exposure and subsequent identity theft of hundreds to thousands of patients.
Data breaches—data breaches can have long-lasting effects on your hospital. Just as breaches with Yahoo or Target led to long-standing consumer mistrust, hospital cyber events will and have had considerable impact on community trust for local providers.
Data breaches including personal identifiable information (PII) or protected health information (PHI) can lead to devastating identity thefts for patients in the care of a provider with leaked information. Ultimately, the community may be your judge and jury when it comes to keeping your doors open. If they see you as negligent stewards of their protected information, how long will you be able to keep the lights on?
Continued attacks—criminals are relentlessly re-attacking hospitals that have fallen for cyberattacks. No matter the flavor of attack, once a hospital or provider becomes a cyber victim, they are 50 times more likely to get attacked again.
IT Teams with bad habits—criminals have found that human nature keeps people from change. And one big change that IT departments fail to implement is routine patching, monitoring, maintenance and security hygiene. Once they’ve recovered from an attack, hospitals are no more likely to improve their security hygiene or improve their digital footprint than before their first attack.
Criminals are hunters—cybercriminals are keeping tabs of you if they find you have unpatched machines on your network or had been a victim of an attack before. They know you likely don’t have your ducks in a row and someone is likely scheduling another attack on your hospital. They know you exist. And the attack is cheap and simple. Why not try a second time? Nothing to lose.
Bottom line: if your IT support is sleepwalking through routines or are overwhelmed with countless user issues—EHR password resets, printing and scanning issues—and don’t have folks dedicated to monitoring your network for suspicious activity, maintenance of software and patch management, or maintaining a secure environment for sensitive information, you’re likely at big risks of being a target in the next ransomware attack.
Do you know what information from your hospital is out on the dark web? Are cybercriminals targeting you in one of their next ransomware campaigns? Will you be able to recover from a cyberattack?
Contact us TODAY for a free 37-point ransomware assessment.
