Protecting Your Hospitals From Ransomware with IT Security

Ransomware is one of the greatest dangers in healthcare IT, with cyberattacks in healthcare rising to 42 percent in 2020. Over the past year and a half, hackers attacked large institutions and smaller organizations with increased intensity.

On this episode of Full Circle Healthcare, Host Tyler Kern talked with Thomas Grove, Vice President of Operations at Phoenix Health Systems. They discussed the increase in ransomware attacks and the criminal organizations that deploy these attacks.

“Ransomware is increasingly common, and it’s expensive,” Grove stated.

One-third of healthcare organizations were impacted by ransomware last year, according to research from Sophos. Two-thirds of organizations also expect to be impacted. “I think the other third are deceiving themselves,” Grove said. The cost of a data breach also hit record highs in 2020; the average price of an incident was $4.24 million.

One of the major difficulties in staying ahead of ransomware attacks is due to the fact that they are constantly evolving. One of the ways to combat this ever-increasing danger is by having your files backed up, according to Grove. This allows healthcare facilities to restore files. However, new ransomware is more mature than this original model. The new ransomware is silently exists for more extended periods while it gathers data.

Grove explained: “When we think of ransomware, we think of ransomware in the classic model, where ransomware gets loaded in your system, it encrypts your files in place. You get contacted by the ransomware itself demanding ransom.”