THREAT INTEL: HEALTHCARE Held Hostage – The Impact of Ransomware Attacks on Healthcare

Gibraltar: Thursday  6 June 2024 at 07:00 CET

THREAT INTEL: HEALTHCARE Held Hostage – The Impact of Ransomware Attacks on Healthcare

By Iain Fraser – Cybersecurity Journalist 
& Andy Jenkinson Group CEO Cybersec Innovation Partner
via IainFRASER.net/CYBERInsights
SME Cyber Insights
Google Indexed on 060624 at 08:30 CET

#SMECyberInsights #SMECybersecurityNews #Cybersecurity #Ransomware #NHS #Healthcare

THREAT INTEL: HEALTHCARE Held Hostage – The Impact of Ransomware Attacks on Healthcare.

A “Critical Incident” reported to be a Ransomware Attack on a third-party contractor Synnovis a Pathology Services provider, caused chaos across multiple London Hospitals on Tuesday (04/06/2024) leading to substantially restricted IT network access for Medical Staff and putting an unacceptable strain on an already beleaguered NHS (National Health Service)

This marks a worrying trend of Cyber Attacks (mainly Ransomware) against Medical institutions globally with in excess of 200 reported incidents since the beginning of January 2019 according to data held by the UK ICO (Information Commissioners Office)

Without access to essential IT infrastructure Hospitals can be forced to redirect Ambulances with critically ill patents on-board having to reroute to other EDs having a devastating impact of time-sensitive conditions such as Heart Attack and Stroke – This is messing with patients lives!

This leads me on to reported findings by Andrew Jenkinson the Group CEO of Cybersec Innovation Partners. There is a common denominator – from yesterday’s NHS/Synnovis Cyber Attack, the collapse of MediSecure, the United Health Care attack earlier this year, the Medibank Cyber Attack in 2022 and going back as far as the 2017 NHS Cyber Attack these Healthcare organisations were exposed to DNS Tampering and Abuse prior to the Cyber Attack and remain exposed to DNS server and IP exploitation. Furthermore, all are using the same third-party to provide DNS services.

“Immaterial, if one considers these a coincidence, (they certainly are not) the fact they are exposed today to known DNS attacks demonstrates a lack of knowledge in this critical area, it also confirms what ever remediation has taken place, these gaping DNS records and servers have NOT been addressed or even considered. This is a major error and one that must be addressed if any resilience to further attacks is to be prevented”   according to Andy Jenkinson

The future is far from rosy for the Healthcare sector as Cyber criminals have proved that they have no morals or scruples. It is also apparent that these organisations need to adopt more stringent protocols and better key Cyber staff rather than the current “Whack-a-mole” strategy.

Of course a Ransomware Attack is substantially damaging for any Corporate but NOT Healthcare – Surely? I for one would like to see these OcCGs and their puppet masters charged with Manslaughter should any patients die as a result of their scandalous Attacks.