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Cyberinfrastructure Education Milwaukee Ransomware Technology

2018 Ransomware attacks on Healthcare

The impact of ransomware, botnets and crypto mining will continue to impact hospitals and clinics in 2018.

ransomware, botnets and crypto mining

More precise, targeted attacks including botnets and crypto mining are projected to overtake global attacks hospitals witnessed with WannaCry and NotPetya.

Healthcare Information Security teams must show risk tolerance and carefully monitor new trends in malware, patch management, and change management.

Ransomware via botnets and crypto mining will continue to drive agile healthcare technology solutions, This will impact business shifts in governance and policy across US healthcare facilities as new attacks continue to focus on financial based malware.

Moving into the new year global attacks may give way to targeted attacks, botnets and crypto mining that have been branded as WannaMine.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Network Ransomware Technology

Healthcare’s 2018 threat is crypto mining

Crypto mining attacks are more stealth than WannaCry.

Cybercriminals continue to drive crypto mining attacks on hospital computers. Some crypto mining attacks will require hospitals report a breach of PHI. If the crypto installed is the popular WannaMine, this is considered a reportable ransomware attack.crypto mining
Last year ransomware took the American healthcare industry by storm. Botnets and crypto mining experienced continued growth since 2016. The WannaCry attack on the British health system and NotPetya simply pushed them off the front pages. They did not disappear. Make no mistake, crypto mining is the new attack vector in 2018 after strong growth over the previous two years.

Tennessee hospital EMR server hit with crypto mining

On January 26th, 2018 Decatur County General Hospital in Parsons, Tennessee announced (PDF) that over 20,000 PHI records were compromised by crypto mining software discovered on the hospital’s main electronic medical records server.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Ransomware Technology

Ransomware Vendor Solutions

There are a number of emerging vendor solutions to address ransomware threats as 2018 begins.

ransomware, botnets and crypto miningThe continuing ransomware threats in 2018 may shift from global attacks to botnets and cryptocurrency attacks. The financial attacks like WannaCry and NotPetya will also continue when cybercriminals can exploit known vulnerabilities on a global scale. The lessons learned from 2017 have reached a critical point for healthcare to ensure hospital attacks on IT infrastructure and medical devices are now protected. Vendors are responding with innovative solutions that may stop a ransomware encryption attack. We look forward to partnering with vendors who can provide this new level of cyber defense.

Vendor White Papers:

Cisco
Ransomware Defense Validated Design Guide (PDF)
US Department of Justice
How to Protect Your Networks from Ransomware
ECRI
2018 Top 10 Tech hazards: Ransomware
ComputerWeekly
WannaCry a signal moment, says NCA
Which?
Ransomware: what it is and how to stop it
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Cyberinfrastructure Education Ransomware Smartphone Technology

Mobile ransomware in healthcare

After WannaCry mobile ransomware is infecting hospital-issued mobile phones and tablets.

mobile ransomwareMobile ransomware attacks in 2017 built upon the sharp increase from earlier years. This is simply malware that steals sensitive data or locks your smartphone permanently.

This is exactly like the WannaCry ransomware attacks that occurred in 2017.
Those same criminals will demand bitcoin payments before unlocking your device.

These mobile ransomware attacks on hospital-issued mobile devices carry risks of exposing PHI data. This is especially important if a hospital workforce employee is accessing PHI data on a personal device that is not secure.

Today healthcare needs Mobile Device Management (MDM) more than ever. Respectable MDM services install a “secure container” on a mobile device that ensures hospital data downloaded to a mobile device is stored in a secure, encrypted directory on the device. This can even prevent the user from copying the data from the container.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Milwaukee Network Ransomware Technology

Ivanti Interchange Podcast

I was humbled to be considered a guest on Ivanti’s Interchange Podcast addressing ransomware in healthcare.

it interchange podcastI added their new series to my collection of InfoSec podcasts as soon as our Hospital server team acquired Ivanti’s Patch for Windows service back in June. In this timeframe, I suggested to our Hospital’s IT patch subcommittee to consider adding Ivanti’s Patch Tuesday Webinar series into our meeting schedule.

Ivanti launched their monthly webinar in April 2017 and provide a solid overview to Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday releases. This also includes key third-party updates from Adobe, Google, and Mozilla.

After registering for October’s webinar, by chance an out-of-the-blue a marketing specialist from Ivanti called. When I confirmed our participation in the coming Patch webinar, they suggested considering their new IT Interchange Podcast. I believe they were pleasantly surprised that I was able to recite all their podcast topics.

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