Healthcare ransomware attacks are on the rise - how to prepare

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Cybercriminals are becoming adept at using legitimate tools to launch more severe and militarized ransomware attacks against healthcare providers. Additionally, they avoid detection by relying on Living off the Land (LotL) techniques that turn attacks into a protracted digital pandemic. Using native Windows and standard remote management tools, malicious ransomware actions blend undetected with regular system administrator activity. As a result, there has been a 94% increase in ransomware attacks targeting healthcare in the last year alone.

Sophos's recent study, "The State of Ransomware in Healthcare 2022", reveals a 69% increase in the volume of cyberattacks and a 67% increase in their complexity this year alone. Another survey found that 18% of healthcare workers are willing to sell confidential data to unauthorized parties for as little as $500 to $1,000. One in four employees know someone who has sold access to patient data to third parties. It's no surprise that insiders are responsible for 58% of all health breaches. IBM's recent Data Breach Report found that 83% of all companies surveyed suffered more than one breach; among the most important factors are remote working and internal employees willing to sell their privileged access credentials.

Healthcare Ransomware: An Accelerating Digital Pandemic

Healthcare providers are prime targets for ransomware attacks, as they often spend less than 10% of their IT budget on security, and patient data is often used to launch fraud and data theft. 'identify. Accellion's payment of an $8.1 million settlement in January, the CaptureRX cyberattack that affected 17 hospitals, and the Scripps cyberattack that affected five hospitals and 19 ambulatory care facilities at an estimated cost of $106.8 million dollars quantify the seriousness of this digital pandemic.

So far in 2022, there have been 368 breaches affecting 25.1 million patients, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services' HHS Breach Portal. 206 of the breaches began with network server compromise by malware, and 95 began with email phishing and abuse of privileged credentials.

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"We know that hackers, once they're in the network and they've compromised the first machine, in about an hour and 38 minutes, on average, they can move laterally to the next machine, then the next machine, and the next machine. So once they figure that out, the chances of you having a ransomware breach and...