Healthcare organizations suffered numerous disruptions because of cybersecurity attacks in 2020. Hospitals and healthcare units suffered blows imposed by threat actors alongside the pandemic’s enormous challenges. In this article at Dark Reading, Jai Vijayan elaborates the facts about cybersecurity attacks. Ransomware, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), botnets, and remote code execution attacks were the most common digital disruption causes.
The Bitter Truth
According to a recent Check Point Software report, the healthcare industry has observed a sharp 45-percent rise in cybersecurity attacks in recent months. The attackers are leaving no stone unturned to take advantage of the situation. By disrupting IT operations, they can demand high ransoms from targeted enterprises. Reportedly, healthcare companies suffered 626 attacks per week in November and 430 incidents on an average in October in 2020.
Alarming Trends
According to Mimecast, about 90 percent of healthcare organizations reported email phishing scams in 2020. The activity was rampant in the initial three quarters of the coronavirus-induced lockdown.
Additionally, cloud storage service providers, including Amazon Web Services, Google, Azure, and Dropbox, have become the victim of malicious content. The threat actors used them as a platform to generate attacks on company networks.
The malicious activities occurred in the healthcare sector throughout 2020, causing enterprises to suffer significant downtime. The situation was not conducive to productivity and data management and resulted in massive financial losses. Disrupted operations and delays in emergency services were critical problems.
Furthermore, many businesses suffer the ongoing challenge of conforming to compliance provisions of HIPAA. Some organizations have migrated to more secure channels of operations. Nonetheless, a lack of unified controls and centralized visibility will continue affecting the healthcare industry’s progress. Click on the following link to read the original article: https://www.darkreading.com/risk/healthcare-organizations-bear-the-brunt-of-cyberattacks-amid-pandemic/d/d-id/1339844
