According to Imperva, over the past year, more than one in three healthcare providers have suffered cyberattacks, with 10% paying various amounts of money to decrypt their files from ransomware.
In total, over 100 IT professionals working in the healthcare sector were surveyed at the recent Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference held this year in the US.
Given the high volume of attacks carried out over the past year, 77% of respondents expressed concern about the increased likelihood of organizations being harmed by a cyber incident, while 15% acknowledged that more needs to be done to improve their defenses against cyberattacks.
Ransomware (32%) was the biggest concern for experts when it came to online threats. This is understandable, given the WannaCry attack that occurred in May 2017, which disrupted large parts of the NHS, resulting in the cancellation of 19,000 medical procedures and appointments .
Most worryingly, over a quarter (26%) of respondents said they have not implemented a security incident response plan – something required by the new regulation, GDPR.
Additionally, 28% said the healthcare organization (HCO) they work for doesn't even have a chief information security officer (CISO).
When asked about insider threats, respondents to the Imperva survey said they were most concerned about careless users (51%). 27% said there are no tools to monitor employees and other activities, making it difficult to detect insider threats.
“Attackers understand the value of the data held by healthcare organizations and, as a result, are quickly becoming a challenge for hackers seeking to steal patient record data for profit,” said Imperva CTO Terry Ray.
