In a recent survey conducted by Cybersecurity Firm Tenable, over 106 million healthcare records were exposed to hackers during the time of past 14 months. And analysis says that most of the records were leaked from the databases of organizations operating in the healthcare sector.
Tenable’s Security Response Team says that in the past 2 months over 56 breaches were disclosed by the end of Feb’2021.
As per the researchers, most of the healthcare related data breaches happened because of ransomware that accounted for over 54.95 percent of attacks. While RYUK topped the list with over 8.64 percent ransomware breaches, Maze followed the path with over 6.17 percent data breaches immediately followed by Conti and REvil aka Sodinokibi resulting in 3.7 and 3.09 percent breaches on a respective note.
Apart from the file encrypting malware, the other incidents that resulted in breaches were related to email phishing/compromise, insider threat and unsecured databases.
During the crisis of Corona Virus pandemic, such cyber attacks on healthcare units might cause an unnecessary strain on the infrastructure of global healthcare.
“As there is no slowdown on the ransomware attacks, healthcare related companies need to resource their tools to cut down risks related to cyber threats,” said Rody Quinlan, Security Response Manager, Tenable.
To safeguard their IT infrastructure against cyber attacks, firms need to identify and patch their security flaws that help in mitigate risks related to attacks and security breaches.
Note- As most companies are opting for remote workers, their critical data is at major risk of falling into the hands of hackers. So, organizations and individuals should take steps to raise their defense line against the cyber risks existing in the current cyber landscape. Hope, all CTOs and CIOs have prepared themselves against such a crisis.
