Hospital Ransomware Attacks On the Rise According to Study

A new study found that there has been a 60 percent increase in endpoint threat detections associated with hospital ransomware. These increasingly common health care attacks are shared in the latest research from Malwarebytes, a remedial and endpoint protection solution.

Ransomware refers to a variety of possible attacks and security breaches that make organizations vulnerable. If hackers can get in, they can jeopardize the security of the overall system or steal data for other criminal purposes.

With ransomware, the typical fallout prevents the organization from being able to access parts of their own operating systems. In some cases, this means parts of programs for daily use, like electronic health records, can be rendered inaccessible, causing chaos across the organization.

Often, a shutdown like this is used to leverage payment of funds for the organization to be able to get back in, and this is why the process is called ransomware.

Even the payment of the fee does not guarantee that the organization can get back in and recover all of their data, however. With hospitals processing a high volume of data relevant to patient records and employees, this poses serious problems for organizations that have not developed a security plan.

It’s hard for security professionals to keep up with trends in ransomware because hackers are always inventing new and unique ways to break-in. There has also been a surge of ransomware as a service offerings on the market, meaning that people with less technical skill can launch attacks of their own.

According to recent research, healthcare organizations experienced a 60 percent jump in threat detections after the company analyzed the first three quarters of 2019 against 2018 data. The health care industry, according to Malwarebytes, has been increasingly targeted by malware over the course of 2019.

The two most common threats were Emotet detections and TrickBot detections. Problems such as vast quantities of personally identifying information, low IT budgets, and aging infrastructure inside health care facilities makes these institutions likely to be prime targets for hospital ransomware attacks.

In fact, the data showed that health care is the seventh most targeted industry by cybercriminals, even though manufacturing and education take the top two spots across 2019. The growth of hospital ransomware attacks has led to multiple successful attack methods for health care networks.

This can be seen in the use of social engineering methods, such as phishing and spear-phishing emails to deliver dangerous links and attachments, taking advantage of weak security protocols and systems, and exploiting vulnerabilities that exist in third party software used by the health care facility.

The impact of a cyber-security breach in the arena of health care as a result of hospital ransomware attacks could have far-reaching implications, as privacy breaches include biological as well as personal data. Worse is that the data can be destroyed, ruining medical histories.

If you or someone you know has already been targeted as a result of hospital ransomware, it is important to understand the possible impact of this on your life and to take necessary steps to protect your identity and personal information that could have been leaked in an attack.

This article is not legal advice. It is presented
for informational purposes only.