Ransomware attacks on businesses operating in the healthcare sector have become a security nightmare for many companies in the past two years. The reason, hackers find the healthcare data extremely lucrative as they can sell the siphoned data on the dark web for exuberant amounts or can also lock the database from further access and demand a ransom of their choice in cryptocurrency.
One of the best ways to prevent ransomware attacks on healthcare databases is to educate employees on how to avoid falling prey to phishing and social engineering ploys. The other way is to have reliable backups in place for disaster recovery. Having endpoint security solutions such as Advanced Threat Detection of the Alien vault will help in mitigating the attack vulnerability.
Despite having all these strategies in place, if in case, an organization gets still infected with ransomware, then it is better to follow the below steps-
• Isolate the infected system on an immediate note by removing it from the network in order to prevent the infection spread on a further note.
• Power Off or isolate the systems which aren’t affected by ransomware as this step helps in containing and reducing damage.
• Step onto business continuity strategies on an immediate note such as data continuity.
• Contact law enforcement on an immediate note like informing the FBI about the ransomware attack and reporting the same in digital form to local police.
• Do not bow down to the demands of the hackers and rush to pay them in haste. Because there is no guaranty that the hackers will offer a decryption key in exchange for the ransom and will never ask for more.
• Delete the registry values and files to stop the program from loading.
Remember there is no silver bullet which applies to ransomware and malware attacks in general. It is just the matter of best practices which helps companies isolate themselves from attacks on their database.
