Health security

Cybersecurity: The Battle for Your Health

While financial institutions and global corporations dedicate immense amounts of money to protect their data from electronic attacks, most hospitals and doctors’ offices still rely on old software and typically don’t bother instructing their employees or patients about online safety.

This has rendered them an attractive target for cybercriminals, even more so as healthcare providers are pressed to respond fast in order to save their patients’ lives (and also guard themselves from potential litigation). Hackers encrypt the data to lock computers making them inaccessible for hospital staff, and then ask for ransom.

From February to April 2016, dozens of U.S. hospitals fell victims of these attacks. The Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles, for instance, was virtually on lockdown for 10 days after the Locky virus took every single computer hostage, preventing physicians from accessing their patients’ records until the ransom was paid. A similar incident took place later in the Methodist Hospital, Kentucky, a critical care facility of 217 beds. In March, the IT system of 10 hospitals belonging to the MedStar Health Inc. chain in Washington DC was infected by a virus, and staff couldn’t log into their computers for several days.