NHS Trusts around the UK have been attacked multiple times in the past year. According to a Freedom of Information disclosure, 28 NHS trusts had undergone ransomware attacks in 2016.
So what does this mean in 2017?
Ransomware ranks highly on the list of threats to the healthcare industry and this shows little sign of slowing up. While the NHS are taking measures to defend their data, 2017 looks likely to have even more attacks.
So what damage was caused by Ransomware to the NHS in 2016?
Unlike some other healthcare bodies, none of the attacked NHS trusts paid the ransoms demanded, according to NHS Digital. The healthcare sector has become a favourite for Ransomware attacks especially in the US due to the high value of data. As a nationalised system, the NHS has certain advantages over the private US system.
Unlike the US where patient records need to be more accessible, especially for managing health insurance payments, the UK health funding arrangement also makes areas like health insurance fraud less of an issue which in turn makes the data less valuable to attackers. This doesn’t mean the NHS is necessarily secure.
This problem will become a bigger threat when the NHS moves to a ‘paperless’ system by 2020. The growing appetite for sensitive medical data amongst cyber-criminals, and increasingly sophisticated ways of formulating attacks, the healthcare industry needs to respond by ensuring IT teams have the tools they need.
Ransomware is an extremely lucrative business for cyber-criminals as once they are in, they just need to encrypt the data whereas actually stealing data and then trying to resell makes it a much longer process. Current data shows that ransomware cases more than doubled from 2015 to 2016. It’s not a case of if but when for most companies, with public sector and healthcare most targeted particularly healthcare, as loss of data could mean loss of life.
How secure is your data? Are you 100% confident you can recover from Ransomware without paying huge penalties?
If you would like to learn more about mitigating Ransomware please join this free webinar as a group participant or on a one-to-one basis. Alternatively contact us today to learn how Assured DP and Rubrik can mitigate your risk.
