CODE BLUE! "The volume and intensity of direct cyberattacks on hospitals and systems have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic."(LAW & JUSTICE)

• Author: Barlow, Eleanor

SOME "91% of hospital administrators consider the security of data as a top focus; 62% feel inadequately trained and unprepared to mitigate cyber risks that could impact their health care organization or hospital," reports medical device company Abbott.

The volume and intensity of direct cyberattacks on hospitals and systems have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Frequently, an attacker wants to cause major disruption to systems, often to the point of bankruptcy. The motive can be personal, a disgruntled employee for instance, or it can be politically or religiously fueled.

One example of this comes from Israel where Kim Zetter of The Washington Post reports that a computer virus had been created to insert images of tumors into CT and MRI scans of patients. The idea behind this was to confuse doctors into misdiagnosing high-profile patients.

While this attack may only have targeted a niche few, attacks on a grander scale also are prevalent. In October 2020, for instance, more than 5,000 networks/devices were targeted, shutting down the IT systems of the University of Vermont Health Network. The system went down for 40 days and caused a loss of over $1,500,000 a day in revenue and expenses. The outage led to the furlough of 300 workers who were unable to do their work while systems were down.

Another example of note was when the Pennsylvania-based Universal Health King of Prussia became a victim of a malware attack that caused a network outage. Universal Health Services, Inc., is an umbrella to hundreds of health care services across the U.S., many of which also were affected and had to resort to paper records while systems were under attack. Often, even when a ransomware is the final end-goal, this disruption in services can cost more in the long run.

Ransomware is a form of malware that penetrates and locks users out of their systems. An attack often is made with the objective to acquire personal or sensitive data that then can be used as part of a ransomware attack for monetary gain. Usually, the purpose of a ransomware attack is to blackmail the victim/targeted organization into transferring large sums of money or assets.

Explains SecurityHQ analyst Mohsin Mahadik: "For a ransomware attack to be possible, a breach needs to be made. To create a breach, bad actors need to target an organization or individual, and send out phishing emails. Once a phishing email attack is successful, this makes a breach possible. Then, through this...