How Cybercriminals are Taking Advantage of Covid-19 to Attack Healthcare?

Enterprise Security Magazine | Tuesday, May 05, 2020

Coronavirus is creating havoc everywhere. However, cyberattacks continue to affect hospital operations, and the capability of healthcare companies to deal with Covid-19 patients.

FREMONT, CA: The Covid-19 is hitting hard on the economy of the world, which is creating a significant volume of uncertainty with businesses. Coronavirus is now considerably impacting the information security and the crisis being actively exploited by threat actors. Recently, Brno University Hospital, Brno, which is a Covid-19 testing center, has been hit by a cyberattack. It resulted in some surgeries to be postponed and some patients to be redirected to close by hospitals.

In addition, US Health and Human Services Departments were hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

Groups and individuals that target weak will definitely take advantage of this dire situation, thus causing more damage to the enterprises that are already going through business disruption, financial distress, and human resource along with the fear the coronavirus pandemic has inflicted in just a short span of time.

Patients ended up bearing the brunt of the cyber attacks but, no Covid-19 or Covid-19, the danger for healthcare companies has effectually remained the same. However, the stakes got higher.

Healthcare companies need to remain vigilant on all front at this time.

It is critical for healthcare agencies and organizations not to be oblivious of cybersecurity and data protection at this moment. It is also imperative to educate healthcare workers about the enhanced risk of ransomware attacks and Covid-19-themed phishing attacks. Nurses and other healthcare professionals are considered one of the preferred targets since they have access to all the data.

In general, healthcare organizations, like any other sector, have several vulnerable links and attack areas like phishing attacks on staff, cloud infrastructure, and remote workforce. Still, there are some obstacles only they face. These comprise the safety of medical devices, Wi-Fi access for patients, and, at the moment, changing priorities due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Hospitals need to give priority to patient care, which decreases their focus on everything else, including business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) and cybersecurity. The hackers take advantage of this gap.

Therefore, it is essential for hospitals to implement best-in-class centralized security with improved response and detection, review security practices, and involve every aspect of the enterprise’s operations. It is not only just IT systems, such as servers, but also medical devices, cloud services, employees wearables, patient systems, and more.