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When you think of a hacker frantically tapping away in a dark room, who do you think he’s targeting? Banks? The government? Try healthcare information. 2018 saw three times as many healthcare-related cyberattacks as the year prior, and 2019 is holding onto that momentum.

Healthcare breaches are much larger in scope than we imagine. While you might think this affects a few dozen people at most, these hacks end up gathering information on thousands — sometimes millions — of patients at a time. One of the largest beaches this year (AMCA), exposed over 20 million patients. While these numbers can be mind-boggling, they do bring some important questions to mind.

Why Do Hackers Target Healthcare Information?

What possible reason could hackers have to want to know about that time you got ringworm at the gym or that you occasionally get heartburn? Healthcare records aren’t targeted for that information, but are actually prized for “full information”. Full information includes names, addresses, birthdates, and Social Security numbers. If someone steals your credit card information, you can have the card canceled and useless within a few minutes. Full information, on the other hand, includes personal information that rarely or never changes.

While we think about credit card information sold on the Dark Web, medical information is even more valuable. Just how valuable? According to current estimates, your medical record can fetch 10 to 60 times that of your credit card information! Once it’s in the wrong hands, that information can be devastating to your credit into the foreseeable future.

How Is Healthcare Information So Easily Breached?

Unfortunately, most healthcare organizations and those that work with them don’t take the hacking threat seriously. Here are some of the biggest factors contributing to this epidemic.

Older Systems

The healthcare industry is notorious for being slow to upgrade their computer systems. One reason is that many healthcare offices are small and have an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. Also, HIPAA requirements are quite strict so finding new software can be a daunting task. There’s even a debate about whether or not newer operating systems are HIPAA compliant. Older, out-of-date software and systems are low hanging fruit for cybercriminals.

No Security Department

Think of your primary care physician’s office. You may be familiar with your doctor, the nurses, and the billing people, but when was the last time you saw an IT department? Many smaller offices don’t have the resources or the wherewithal to have something like this formally set up. They depend on the general staff —who are often overworked as it is — to take care of the day-to-day technical issues. Even if the entire staff is competent in this area, this would be a major undertaking.

Massive Interconnectivity

You might remember having to wait while people faxed/mailed your medical records from one place to another if you changed doctors or had to have treatment at a different location. Now, it takes a few minutes while things electronically transfer. We expect convenience, but it comes at a cost. Many medical facilities and hospitals constantly send information back and forth throughout the day. The more points of transfer in a system, the more opportunities there are for someone to find an entry point.

Various Devices

Along with being interconnected, healthcare is more and more dependant on technology. In many areas, modern healthcare facilities look more like a futuristic spaceship than a hospital! Remember that every piece of technology that uses medical information is a potential target for hackers. While the main servers might be heavily protected, who makes sure that the third desktop at the nurse’s station on the second floor has its security updated? What about the rolling computer used for billing or the tablet used by one of the surgeons? Any of these devices open the door for someone to gain access to all of the patients in the system.

Out of sight, out of mind

Unfortunately, this is most likely the main cause of hacks in the healthcare system. Medical professionals are well aware of the idea of “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Unfortunately, they tend to ignore this when it comes to their IT, waiting until a disaster to force necessary changes.

If you are in the healthcare industry or work with healthcare information (i.e. lawyers, billing departments, accountants), don’t wait before it’s too late to turn a new leaf. If you frequent doctor’s offices, make sure they know the importance of cybersecurity. The last thing you want is to be on the news as the latest victim.

From a technology standpoint, there’s never been a better time to be alive. Chatting with people for free all across the world or opening your front door at home while in a business meeting, it seems that our interconnected world has unlimited possibilities. Sadly, that can go really wrong when people with less than pure motives take advantage. Viruses and other threats are on the rise, and there is one word whose very mention sends shivers down the spine of mortal cybersecurity professionals everywhere: ransomware.

Ransome is so frightening because of how quickly it is becoming a major issue across all systems worldwide and how devastating it is for businesses. Today, we will be discussing this threat and what you need to do to keep it out of your business.

Know Thy Enemy

What exactly is ransomware and why should you care? Like other computer threats (think viruses or trojan horses), ransomware has a colorful name that aptly describes what it does. In fact, it’s exactly what it sounds like: someone holds your data or computer access hostage until you pay a ransom. Depending on the circumstances, this can range from a relatively small sum to well over $1,000,000.

These attacks rarely occur on their own. Most often they are part of an email phishing scheme. As criminals have become more and more sophisticated, attacks like these — that only suckers used to fall for — are becoming common even among seasoned professionals.

The Rise

Ransomware has grown to by one of the top cyber threats your company faces. To put this in perspective, in 2018, we saw a 300% increase in ransomware attacks from the year before. So far in 2019, we’ve seen even more attacks than all of last year.

Why the increase? Frankly, because it works. While the ransom can be quite high, most hackers consider the size of the company and value of the data. In most cases, they set the price cheaper than manually restoring the data, so many companies just pay the ransom and hope if they don’t have a proper backup. The FBI recommends not paying so as to not encourage the hackers, but they also recognize that this may actually be the only option for many organizations without the proper security protocols in place.

(In)Famous Status

Ransomware has been popular in the news lately because hackers are targeting governments of all sizes, in addition to businesses. For instance, in the state of Florida alone, seven municipalities have been victims. In April, the city of Tallahassee paid $500,000 to get access to critical systems and data after an attack. They paid for the attack by diverting funds from employee payroll. The city of Riviera Beach paid over $600,000 in Bitcoin for a similar attack in May after an employee fell for a phishing scam!

National governments are also falling victim! The government of Ecuador said that have seen over 40 million attempts to hack into their system. A few have been successful, resulting in expensive ransoms.

What Does This All Mean?

Saying that “ransomware is here to stay,” would be a massive understatement. However, there is a bit of good news about this. While ransomware itself is a relatively new threat, it uses old standbys to enter your computer in the first place. Ransomware affects your system after hitching a ride on another threat, such as a virus or phishing attempt. Think of it this way. In the past few years, zika, a dangerous virus passed on by mosquitos has been on the rise. Because it’s transmitted by a known pest, we can use the same precautions we’ve always used against mosquitos to prevent infection. This would include repellent, avoiding standing water and wearing long clothing.

Similarly, the best way to avoid ransomware is to protect your network against many of the same threats we’ve always faced with computers. This means being proactive and keeping your system safe before the ransomware can have access to your vital data. In the event of a breach, you also need to have a viable back-up to seamlessly rollback before the attack.

How well does your current system protect you from ransomware and other

While the number of people falling for sending personal information to the crown prince of Nigeria in hopes of receiving his promised wealth and riches seems to be dropping, phishing remains a major issue. In fact, the number of phishing campaigns pursued by hackers around the world increased 65% in the last year.

What exactly is phishing? Hackers mimic the emails, forms, and websites of legitimate companies in an effort to lure people into providing their private, personal information, like credit card numbers, social security information, account logins, and personal identifiers. The victim typically doesn’t realize they’ve been compromised until long after the event, and oftentimes only after their identity or finances are affected. In the past, an attack was carried out relatively quickly. As soon as the victim gave up their information, the hacker moved in and stole money from the compromised account. Today, it’s often more lucrative for hackers to sell that information on the Dark Web, resulting in longer-lasting and even more devastating attacks.

3 Types Of Phishing Attacks

Spear Phishing

Phishing attempts directed at specific individuals or companies have been termed spear phishing. Attackers may gather personal information about their target to increase their probability of success. This technique is by far the most successful on the Internet today, accounting for 91% of attacks.

Threat Group-4127 used spear phishing tactics to target email accounts linked to Hillary Clinton‘s 2016 presidential campaign. They attacked more than 1,800 Google accounts and implemented accounts-google.com domain to threaten targeted users.

Clone Phishing

Clone phishing is a type of phishing attack whereby a legitimate and previously delivered email containing an attachment or link, has had its content and recipient address(es) taken and used to create an almost identical or cloned email. The attachment or link within the email is replaced with a malicious version and then sent from an email address spoofed to appear as though it came from the original sender. It may claim to be a resend of the original or an updated version to the original. This technique could be used to pivot (indirectly) from a previously infected machine and gain a foothold on another machine, by exploiting the social trust associated with the inferred connection due to both parties receiving the original email.

Whaling

Several phishing attacks have been directed specifically at senior executives and other high-profile targets within businesses. The term whaling has been coined for these kinds of attacks. In the case of whaling, the masquerading web page/email will take a more serious executive-level form. The content will be crafted to target an upper manager and the person’s role in the company. The content of a whaling attack email is often written as a legal subpoena, customer complaint, or executive issue. Whaling scam emails are designed to masquerade as a critical business email, sent from a legitimate business authority. The content is meant to be tailored for upper management, and usually involves some kind of falsified company-wide concern. Whaling phishers have also forged official-looking FBI subpoena emails and claimed that the manager needs to click a link and install special software to view the subpoena.

Have you ever gotten an email from your bank or medical office asking you to update your information online or confirm your username and password? Maybe a suspicious email from your boss asking you to execute a wire transfer. That is most likely a spear phishing attempt, and you’re among the 76% of businesses that were victims of a phishing attack in the last year.

Method of Delivery

Phishing scams are not always received through email and hackers are getting trickier and trickier with their preferred method of execution. In 2017, officials caught onto attacks using SMS texting (smishing), Voice phishing (vishing) or social engineering, a method in which users can be encouraged to click on various kinds of unexpected content for a variety of technical and social reasons.

Ransomware: The Consequence

Phishing is the most widely used method for spreading ransomware, and has increased significantly since the birth of major ransomware viruses like Petya and Wannacry. Anyone can become a victim of phishing or in turn, ransomware attacks. However, hackers have begun targeting organizations that are more likely to pay the ransoms. Small businesses, education, government, and healthcare often, don’t have valid data backups. Therefore they are unable to roll back to a pre-ransomed version of their data. Instead, they have to pay their way out or cease to exist. Outside of ransom costs, victims of phishing campaigns are often branded as untrustworthy and many of their customers turn to their competitors, resulting in even greater financial loss.

Why are effective phishing campaigns so rampant despite public awareness from media coverage?

Volume: There are nearly 5 million new phishing sites created every month, according to Webroot Threat Report. There are now even Phishing as a Service companies, offering phishing attacks in exchange for payment. One Russian website, “Fake Game,” claims over 61,000 subscribers and 680,000 credentials stolen.

They work: Over 30% of phishing messages get opened, and 12% of targets click on the embedded attachments or links, according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. In short, these hackers have gotten really good at looking really legitimate.

They’re simple to execute: New phishing campaigns and sites can be built by sophisticated hackers in a matter of minutes. While we think there are far more legitimate ways to be earning money, these individuals have made a living out of duplicating their successful campaigns.

Now that you have an understanding of what phishing is, our next two blogs will teach you How to Spot a Phishing Attack, and Fixing Your Weakest Link: Your Employees.