Healthcare organizations are still struggling to keep their patients’ confidential data out of the reach of hackers. With the onset of COVID-19, hospitals rushed to provide care to patients, sometimes at the cost of cybersecurity. And, they are still paying for it.
What’s going on?
- As per the 2020 Healthcare Data Breach report, healthcare data breaches went up by 36% in H2 2020, with more than 21.3 million records being stolen.
- Moreover, the use of SolarWinds software by healthcare firms makes them vulnerable to the threats faced by Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, the U.S. military, and universities.
- A report by British Columbia’s auditor general states that thousands of medical equipment are lacking in proper cybersecurity measures. More than 18,000 devices were audited and it was found that the authority did not assess all cybersecurity risks.
Incidents you should know about
- The Leon Medical Centers in Miami and Nocona General Hospital in Texas were hit by ransomware attacks, in which the hackers stole and compromised thousands of medical records.
- The CHwapi hospital in Belgium was hit by an attack, in which the threat actors claimed to have encrypted 40 servers, along with 100TB of data, using Windows Bitlocker.
- The Dax hospital center was targeted by a large-scale attack that encrypted the entire information system.
The bottom line
There’s no magic bullet to kill all the cybersecurity pains the healthcare sector is going through. Although healthcare organizations are responding faster to threats, it is still not enough. A multi-tiered security program is the need of the hour.
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