The healthcare sector has already embraced the cloud and the digital transformation of their technological systems and business models, even before the new coronavirus pandemic. Many have been comfortably working with this technology. 

For others, the recent pandemic forced unready and unwilling healthcare companies to change to allow patients remote treatment and telemedicine quickly.

As a result, healthcare security teams now have to fight with a considerably broader and more dynamic threat environment.

The healthcare industry has some unique cyber challenges, and as such, here are the two cyberattacks that you will see most commonly on healthcare infrastructure. 

Ransomware

According to a global poll done in January and February 2021, 34% of healthcare institutions paid the ransom to regain access to their data. Just 65% of their information was successfully recovered. 

According to the same poll, firms in the healthcare industry choose to pay the ransom because they need to maintain their operations. Yet, the long-term consequences of such a move might be disastrous. 

It motivates criminals to organize more assaults and extort enormous quantities of money. This might hurt healthcare spending and activity.

Phishing

Phishing attacks will account for 22% of all data breaches in 2020. Phishing is closely linked to ransomware: a single click on a deceptive link may cause a whole organization’s data to be compromised. 

This tried-and-true social engineering strategy is now being used against the healthcare system. It’s the most common way for ransomware to spread. Given that email is the primary means of communication between experts, many of the assaults against the healthcare sector in 2020 and 2021 focused primarily on it.

But there are more that you need to be vigilant about. 

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