Website design By BotEap.comWhile healthcare providers and providers in the healthcare industry can’t afford to ignore HIPAA, a new threat has emerged and is about to get much bigger: ransomware attacks on hospitals and healthcare providers. health care that do not seek to breach patient information, but instead render it inaccessible until the organization pays. a strong ransom.
Website design By BotEap.comIn the past few weeks alone, the following major ransomware attacks on healthcare facilities have occurred:
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Website design By BotEap.comIn February 2016, hackers used ransomware called Locky to attack Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, rendering the organization’s computers inoperable. After a week, the hospital gave in to the hackers’ demands and paid a ransom of $17,000.00 in Bitcoin for the key to unlock their computers.
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Website design By BotEap.comIn early March 2016, the Methodist Hospital in Henderson, Kentucky was also attacked with Locky ransomware. Rather than pay the ransom, the organization restored data from backups. However, the hospital was forced to declare a “state of emergency” that lasted approximately three days.
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Website design By BotEap.comIn late March, MedStar Health, which operates 10 hospitals and more than 250 outpatient clinics in the Maryland/DC area, fell victim to a ransomware attack. The organization immediately shut down its network to prevent the attack from spreading and began gradually restoring data from backups. Although MedStar hospitals and clinics remained open, employees were unable to access email and electronic health records, and patients were unable to schedule appointments online; everything had to go back to paper.
Website design By BotEap.comThis is probably just the beginning. A recent study by the Health Information Trust Alliance found that 52% of US hospital systems were infected by malware.
Website design By BotEap.comWhat is ransomware?
Website design By BotEap.comRansomware is malware that renders a system inoperable (essentially holding it hostage) until a ransom fee (usually demanded in Bitcoin) is paid to the hacker, who then provides a key to unlock the system. Unlike many other forms of cyberattacks, which typically seek to access data on a system (such as credit card information and social security numbers), ransomware simply locks the data.
Website design By BotEap.comHackers often employ social engineering techniques, such as phishing emails and freeware downloads, to introduce ransomware onto a system. It only takes one workstation to be infected for the ransomware to work; Once the ransomware has infected a single workstation, it traverses the target organization’s network and encrypts files on both mapped and unallocated network drives. Given enough time, it can even get into an organization’s backup files, making it impossible to restore the system using backups, as Methodist Hospital and MedStar did.
Website design By BotEap.comOnce the files are encrypted, the ransomware displays a pop-up window or webpage explaining that the files were locked and providing instructions on how to pay to unlock them (some MedStar employees reported seeing such a pop-up before). the system will shut down). down). The ransom is almost always demanded in the form of Bitcoin (BTC for short), an untraceable “cryptocurrency.” Once the ransom is paid, the hacker promises, a decryption key will be provided to unlock the files.
Website design By BotEap.comUnfortunately, because ransomware perpetrators are criminals and therefore not trustworthy to begin with, paying the ransom is not guaranteed to work. An organization can pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars and get no response, or receive a key that doesn’t work, or doesn’t work at all. For these reasons, as well as to determine future attacks, the FBI recommends that ransomware victims not give in and pay. However, some organizations may panic and be unable to exercise such restraint.
Website design By BotEap.comBecause of this, ransomware attacks can be much more lucrative for hackers than stealing data. Once a dataset is stolen, the hacker must find a buyer and negotiate a price, but in a ransomware attack, the hacker already has a “buyer”: the owner of the information, who is not in a position to to negotiate the price. .
Website design By BotEap.comWhy is the healthcare industry subject to ransomware attacks?
Website design By BotEap.comThere are several reasons why the healthcare industry has become a prime target for ransomware attacks. First is the sensitivity and importance of healthcare data. A business that sells, say, treats or pet supplies will take a financial hit if it can’t access its customer data for a few days or a week; orders may be left unfilled or delivered late. However, no customer will be harmed or killed if a box of chocolates or a dog bed is not delivered on time. The same cannot be said for healthcare; Doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals need immediate and continuous access to patient data to prevent injury, even death.
Website design By BotEap.comUS News & World Report points to another culprit: the fact that health care, unlike many other industries, went digital virtually overnight rather than gradually and over time. Additionally, many healthcare organizations view their IT departments as a cost to be minimized and therefore do not allocate enough money or human resources to this function:
Website design By BotEap.comAccording to statistics from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, while only 9.4% of hospitals used a basic electronic record system in 2008, 96.9% of them used electronic record systems. electronic certificate in 2014.
Website design By BotEap.comThis explosive growth rate is alarming and indicates that health care entities may not have the organizational readiness to adopt information technology in such a short time. Many of the small and medium-sized health care organizations do not see IT as an integral part of health care, but see it as a mandate imposed by larger hospitals or the federal government. Precisely for this reason, healthcare organizations do not prioritize IT and security technologies in their investments and therefore do not allocate the necessary resources to ensure the security of their IT systems, making them especially vulnerable to attacks. privacy violations.
Website design By BotEap.comWhat can the healthcare industry do about ransomware?
Website design By BotEap.comFirst, the healthcare industry needs a major mindset shift: Providers need to stop viewing information systems and information security as overhead costs to be minimized, realizing that IT is a critical part of healthcare in the 21st century and allocate the appropriate monetary and human resources to run and secure its information systems.
Website design By BotEap.comThe good news is that since ransomware almost always enters a system through simple social engineering techniques, such as phishing emails, it is entirely possible to prevent ransomware attacks by taking measures such as:
