Almost half of all data breaches in hospitals and the wider healthcare sector are as a result of ransomware attacks according to new research.
Ransomware gangs are increasingly adding an extra layer of extortion to attacks by not only encrypting networks and demanding hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in bitcoin to restore them, but also stealing sensitive information and threatening to publish it if the ransom isn’t paid.
This double extortion technique is intended as extra leverage to force victims of ransomware attacks to give in and pay the ransom rather than taking the time to restore the network themselves. For healthcare, the prospect of data being leaked on the internet is particularly disturbing as it can involve sensitive private medical data alongside other forms of identifiable personal information of patients.
Read more…
Source: ZDNet