Progress in Recovery for Hacked Healthcare Giant, but Concerns Persist for Small Clinics

The healthcare system in the United States is still in shock and learning lessons from recent cyber attack in a large healthcare organization. This cyber attack is causing delays in claim processing and taking a toll in the overall revenue. The recent attack prompted the giant healthcare organization, Change Healthcare to shut down its systems, including more than hundred applications across different channels like across pharmacy, medical record, clinical, dental, patient engagement, and payment services.

The healthcare domain is one of the soft targets for cyber attack actors. Different factors such as sensitive data, critical infrastructure, Internet of Medical Things (I0MT) have made healthcare sector vulnerable to cyber attack.
Healthcare organizations have access to wide range of sensitive data that include patients’ health information and financial data like credit card information. Many medical care organizations store all the data in one centralized location, making it lucrative target for cyber fraud artists. Secondly, cyber attackers like ransomware groups often target healthcare organizations that provide critical care as they need to restore operations as soon as possible, making them likely to meet the attackers’ demands. Most healthcare organizations rely on networked devices to provide patient care and many of these devices lack good security feature, making it convenient for attackers to steal sensitive information about the patients.

Healthcare providers and insurance organizations face different types of cyber threats and some of the common cyber threats are data breaches, ramsomware, malware, Distributed Denial of Services (DD0S), Phishing, Account Takeover. Staying safe against cyber threats require highly advanced cyber security solutions that are specifically developed for preventing new-aged cyber attacks and help ensure HIPAA compliance.

Paradoxically, amidst these genuine financial challenges, the frequency and severity of cyberattacks against healthcare organizations persist in escalating. Regrettably, it is the patients who endure the greatest hardships within this unyielding cycle of financial strain and vulnerability to cyber threats.