This week is a very public-sector-oriented Week in Breach. Ransomware woes have made a home in five North American locales (complete with a new gang on the scene), trouble rained on everyone’s parade at Swiss Cloud, and we’ll explore the idea of cybercrime as a public health threat.
UnitingCare Queensland: Healthcare Support Services
Risk to Business: 2.112 = Severe
UnitingCare Queensland has confirmed it has been impacted by a cybersecurity incident that has caused some of its systems to become inaccessible as remediation efforts begin. The organization supplies eldercare, disability support, in-home health care and crisis response services. The company does not expect significant disruptions in care as a result of the incident which is under investigation.
Individual Impact: No sensitive personal or financial information was announced as compromised in this incident, but the investigation is ongoing.
Customers Impacted: Unknown
How it Could Affect Your Customers’ Business: Malware and ransomware have been the plague of increasingly beleaguered healthcare targets. Every organization in the sector should step up phishing resistance training to reduce the chance of falling prey to an attack.
1 – 1.5 = Extreme Risk
1.51 – 2.49 = Severe Risk
2.5 – 3 = Moderate Risk
Risk scores for The Week in Breach are calculated using a formula that considers a wide range of factors related to the assessed breach.
Is Cybercrime a Public Health Menace?
Healthcare organizations worldwide have seen an onslaught of cyberattacks in the last 12 months as cybercriminals seek to profit from an overburdened yet essential resource. In the midst of the global pandemic, heartless cybercriminals chose to slam healthcare and healthcare-related organizations with ransomware, phishing, hacking and other dangerous and disruptive cyberattacks. That means that cybercrime isn’t just an expensive inconvenience – it’s a public health menace.
Ransomware incidents had a huge impact on the healthcare sector in 2020 – attacks against healthcare organizations have jumped about 45% since early November. Many of those attacks didn’t just snatch data from hospitals. Some ransomware attacks caused significant patient care disruptions, forcing staffers to rely on old-fashioned pencil and paper records in the midst of the world’s worst health crisis in generations.
Data breaches at healthcare organizations have also soared by an estimated 55% in 2020, with huge spikes in Q4. These breaches affected more than 26 million people. That’s a big contributor to the flood of personally identifiable information that made its way to the dark web last year, increasing every company’s risk for dangers like a credential compromise.
Protect your business from the increased risk of ransomware and credential compromise that healthcare and even healthcare-adjacent businesses are facing today. You’ll get the most value for your money by adding secure identity and access management using a dynamic solution like Passly. It includes multifactor authentication, one tool that provides strong protection against 99% of password-based cybercrime, like a phished password. You’ll have peace of mind knowing that you’ve made a strong move for your business.
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