Hacking

Healthcare organizations faced a 45% increase in attacks since November

According to a new report published by Check Point, organizations in the healthcare industry have faced a 45% increase in attacks since November.

Check Point researchers reported a surge in the number of attacks against organizations in the healthcare industry, +45% since November.

This is more than double the overall increase observed by the experts in the other sectors on a global scale during the same period.

The increase was announced by a Joint Cybersecurity Advisory issued by the CISA, FBI, and HHS published at the end of October that warned of an imminent cybercrime threat to US hospitals and healthcare providers.

The attacks involved a broad range of vectors, such as ransomware, botnets, phishing, and DDoS attacks. The researchers pointed out that ransomware represented the biggest threat to healthcare organizations.

According to Check Point, the average number of weekly attacks against organizations in the healthcare sector reached 626 per entity in November, compared with 430 in October. The main ransomware variants involved in were Ryuk, followed by Sodinokibi.

The report states that Healthcare organizations in some regions were more exposed to cyber threats.

“Central Europe tops the list of regions impacted by the spike in attacks against healthcare organizations, with a 145% increase in November, followed by East Asia, which suffered a 137% increase, and Latin America with a 112% increase.” continues the report. “Europe and North America saw  67% & 37% increases respectively.”

Healthcare organizations in Canada and Germany were most exposed to cyberattacks, with an uptick in the number of attacks of over 250% and 220%, respectively. 

Most of the attacks are carried out by financially motivated attackers that attempt to rapidly maximize their efforts.  

“Medical services and research organizations became targets for attacks seeking to steal valuable commercial and professional information, or to disrupt vital research operations.” concludes the report.

“As the world’s attention continues to focus on dealing with the pandemic, cybercriminals will also continue to use and try to exploit that focus for their own illegal purposes — so it’s essential that both organizations and individuals maintain good cyber-hygiene to protect themselves against covid-related online crime.”  

If you want to receive the weekly Security Affairs Newsletter for free subscribe here.

[adrotate banner=”9″][adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, healthcare industry)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

Recent Posts

Czech Republic accuses China’s APT31 of a cyberattack on its Foreign Ministry

The Czech government condemned China after linking cyber espionage group APT31 to a cyberattack on…

4 hours ago

New PumaBot targets Linux IoT surveillance devices

PumaBot targets Linux IoT devices, using SSH brute-force attacks to steal credentials, spread malware, and…

8 hours ago

App Store Security: Apple stops $2B in fraud in 2024 alone, $9B over 5 years

Apple blocked over $9B in fraud in 5 years, including $2B in 2024, stopping scams…

9 hours ago

Crooks use a fake antivirus site to spread Venom RAT and a mix of malware

Researchers found a fake Bitdefender site spreading the Venom RAT by tricking users into downloading…

13 hours ago

Iranian Man pleaded guilty to role in Robbinhood Ransomware attacks<gwmw style="display:none;"></gwmw>

Iranian man pleads guilty to role in Baltimore ransomware attack tied to Robbinhood, admitting to…

14 hours ago

DragonForce operator chained SimpleHelp flaws to target an MSP and its customers

Sophos warns that a DragonForce ransomware operator chained three vulnerabilities in SimpleHelp to target a…

1 day ago