Cyberattack: 237 breaches hit healthcare sector in 2020

About 237 breaches hit the healthcare sector globally in 2020 while 56 more have already been disclosed by the end of February 2021 said a report from cybersecurity company TenableOf the 293 breaches known to have exposed records in the 14month period analysed 5734 per cent publicly disclosed how many records were exposedWhile over 10 crore healthcare records were exposed in 2020 286 lakh records have been disclosed so far in the first two months of 2021 showed the dataRansomware was reported as the most prominent root cause of healthcare breaches accounting for a whopping 5495 per centThe top ransomware used was Ryuk accounting for 864 per cent of ransomwarerelated breachesIt was followed by Maze 617 per cent Conti 37 per cent and REvilSondinokibi 309 per centThirdparty breaches accounted for over a quarter of the breaches tracked and nearly 12 million exposed recordsOther leading causes included email compromisephishing 2116 per cent insider threat 717 per cent and unsecured databases 375 per centApart from the obvious strain of dealing with the pandemic telehealth solutions surfaced as a prominent risk area over the last yearWhile it may be the muchneeded answer to getting medical care to those in need beyond the limitations of social distancing norms telehealth solutions considerably expand the surface area for attacksAs the Covid19 pandemic continues to place unprecedented strain on global healthcare infrastructure attackers are finding what was already an attractive target even more enticing Rody Quinlan Security Response Manager Tenable said in a statementTechnology dependent services such as telehealth Covid19 contact tracing app and a rush to develop and distribute vaccines have greatly expanded the attack surfaceIn order to reduce the risk of compromise healthcare organisations should identify and remediate vulnerabilities most likely to target and impact your organisation Tenable saidOnce the vulnerabilities most likely to introduce business risk are identified and prioritised they need to remediate them and continue regular maintenance checkups it addedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever