Cybercriminals Love Healthcare

In general, cybercriminals will target the most vulnerable of organizations that can provide the biggest payoff. In the early days of internet-based computing, this meant primarily the finance industry was most vulnerable to attacks.

However, it turns out a different industry has been far more lucrative in recent years. The irony of this fact is that this industry is most vulnerable to cyberattacks but in itself helps people who are at their most vulnerable when they are hurt or sick. This is, of course, the healthcare industry.

Healthcare is a Target-Rich Environment for Cybercriminals

It turns out that the healthcare industry has ranked highest in associated costs from data breaches for almost the last decade. The numbers speak for themselves.

The Ponemon Institute reported in their 2018 Cost of a Data Breach Study that, “for the 8th year in a row, Healthcare organizations had the highest costs associated with data breaches – costing them $408 per lost or stolen record – nearly three times higher than the cross-industry average ($148).”

2018 Healthcare Breaches

Healthcare IT News has reported that healthcare continues to be a lucrative target for hackers with “weaponized ransomware, misconfigured cloud storage buckets and phishing emails dominating the year. In 2018, these threats will continue, and cybercriminals will likely get more creative despite better awareness among healthcare organizations at the executive level for the funding needed to protect themselves.” 

The website also reports on the major breaches impacting the healthcare market specifically:

• 3 phishing hacks breach 20,000 Catawba Valley patient records
• CMS responds to data breach affecting 75,000 in federal ACA portal
• Two phishing attacks on Minnesota DHS breach 21,000 patient records
• Ransomware attack on fetal diagnostic lab breaches 40,800 patient records
• Phishing attack breaches 38,000 patient records at Legacy Health
• 417,000 Augusta University Health patient records breached nearly one year ago
• 4 million patient records breached in UnityPoint Health phishing attack
• Hackers breach 5 million Singapore patient records, including the prime minister's
• Ransomware attack on Cass Regional shuts down EHR
• LifeBridge Health reveals breach that compromised health data of 500,000 patients

An Ounce of Cybersecurity Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure (Read: Remediation)

When you are truly ready for a cyber threat “prevention” system instead of remediating damages after the fact (if and when you find it), then a solution that delivers a deep inspection and analysis methodology which can interpret and detect malicious code in real time and immediately block threats from penetrating your organization is the only way to go.

This solution should also be evasion proof and even prevent even zero-day attacks.

Learn more here.