In the wake of ransomware attacks continuing on healthcare providers, despite the obvious need for hospitals and urgent care clinics to remain operational, one company is offering some help.
You’d think that even cybercriminals have some measure of common sense and would avoid targeting healthcare providers at a time when they are vital to the survival of… well, humanity. But, it seems that we’re just not seeing that level of intelligence, with ransomware attacks on healthcare provides actually increasing. And because the average ransomware attack puts an organization out of business for 15 days, ransomware response company Coveware is offering healthcare providers with free ransomware remediation assistance.
This assistance includes analysis of the ransomware, free decryption (if available), and ransom negotiation as a last resort.
According to Coveware, Healthcare is the #2 most-attacked industry, with Sodinokibi and Ryuk ransomware variants taking the lion’s share of attacks. Between these two, Ryuk almost exclusively is spread via email phishing attacks, putting healthcare workers on not just the frontlines of the pandemic, but of ransomware attacks.
While we all know healthcare workers are busy where COVID remains very active in parts of the world, providing some degree of Security Awareness Training can have a material impact on lowering the likelihood of these key employees from falling for phishing scams contextually designed to trick healthcare workers into clicking on links and attachments.
The assistance from Coveware will help speed up the process or recovering from a ransomware attack. But Security Awareness Training will help keep healthcare providers from becoming a victim in the first place.
