Privacy is a scarce commodity in today’s online environment. Big corporations, such as healthcare, know everything there is to know about you, thanks to data brokers who collect and consolidate all the data crumbs you leave when you surf the web. However, this invasion of privacy pales in comparison to the consequences of a criminal hacking team digging deep into your personal data. Hackers cash in on their illicit access to your life as soon as possible, preferably before you even realize there’s an issue.

“After a data breach, what is the most critical next step you should take?”
According to some experts, the year 2022 will be the most significant in terms of data breaches ever. Your personal life will be exposed sooner or later. If you find out you’ve been hacked, what should you do?

We set out to seek some expert advice from data security specialists on what they consider the best procedures for dealing with a data breach. We’ve also put together this free-to-download white paper on the 2021 data breach trends and threats, including research findings and expert advice.

Different Types of Cyber-Attacks to Recognize

Unfortunately, any company can be subjected to a data breach or a cyber attack. It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is; if your data, key papers, or client information is compromised, recovering from the fallout could be challenging.

Cyber-attacks come in a variety of forms. The following are a few of the most common:

Phishing is a social engineering scam that falsely uses email to gain sensitive information. This is the most typical hacking approach for getting an employee to open an attachment or click on a link. Hackers use phishing attacks to acquire direct access to a target’s email, social media, or other accounts and modify or compromise associated systems like point-of-sale equipment and order processing systems.

Ransomware is malicious software that prevents users from accessing a computer system unless a sum of money (or ransom) is paid or another action is taken. Viruses, worms, and trojan horses get access to a computer and then destroy it. Hackers force victims to pay a ransom, usually in bitcoin, to unlock their systems. Cyber-attack victims have spent millions of dollars to regain access to their networks in some circumstances.

Unencrypted Data – This is plaintext or data that has not been altered and can be accessed by anyone. This might be critical data kept online on cloud servers with no security measures. By encrypting your data, you may protect yourself from brute force attacks and cyberattacks like malware and ransomware. Data is safeguarded via encryption when sent to the cloud or on a computer system.

What Are The Steps To Take After a Data Breach?

If your company has been the victim of a data breach and you’re not sure what to do next, follow these measures to assist minimize the damage:

1. Keep Your Cybersecurity Breach Under Control

While removing everything following a data breach may be tempting, evidence preservation is critical for understanding how the breach occurred and who was involved. After a breach, you should first determine which servers have been compromised and isolate them as quickly as possible to avoid infecting additional servers or devices.

Here are a few things you can do right now to try to stop a data breach:

What to do if you’re the victim of a cyber-attack:

• Turn off your internet.
• Remote access should be disabled.
• Keep your firewall settings intact.
• Install any security updates or fixes that are available.
• Passwords should be changed regularly.

All passwords that are affected or susceptible should be changed right away. For each account, create a fresh, strong password, and avoid using the same password on numerous accounts. If a data breach occurs again in the future, the damage may be reduced.

2. Examine the Security Breach

If you are a victim of a more significant attack that has impacted several firms, make sure you stay up to current developments from reputable sources watching the situation. Hence, you know what to do next. Whether you’re a victim of a more significant attack or the only victim, you’ll need to figure out what caused the breach at your particular facility so you can act to prevent it from happening again. Consider the following questions:

• Who has access to the virus-infected servers?
• When the incident happened, which network connections were active?
• How did the attack start?

Checking your firewall or email providers’ security data logs, your antivirus application, or your Intrusion Detection System’s logs may assist you in finding out how the incident occurred. Consider hiring a trained cyber investigator if you’re having trouble pinpointing the source and scope of the breach; it might be worth the investment to help you secure yourself in the future.

Determine who has been impacted by the breach.
You’ll also need to figure out who was impacted by the breach, such as employees, customers, and third-party vendors. Determine what information was accessed or targeted, such as birthdays, mailing addresses, email accounts, and credit card numbers, to determine the data breach’s severity.

Educate your employees on data breach procedures.

Your staff should be informed of your company’s data security procedures. Adjust and disclose your security policies after determining the source of the breach to help prevent a repeat of the situation. Consider limiting data access to your staff. You should also train your personnel to regularly prepare for or avert a data breach.

3.     Manage the Repercussions of Your Cyber-Attack

Managers and staff should be notified about the violation.

Inform your employees about the situation. Establish clear permissions for team members to communicate internally and externally about the problem. While your company recovers from a data breach, it’s critical to be on the same page with your employees. To identify the appropriate way to notify your customers of the breach, you may need to seek legal guidance.

Notify your insurer if you have cyber liability insurance.

Cyber liability insurance is designed to help you recover from a data breach or cyber security attack. As quickly as possible, contact your carrier to see how they can help you with what to do following a cyber-attack. Suppose you don’t already have a cyber liability insurance policy. In that case, AmTrust’s authorized agents will help you choose one that will cover the costs of dealing with future cyber catastrophes as well as identifying possible cyber exposures.

Customers should be informed.

Consider establishing a special action hotline dedicated to answering queries from affected folks to demonstrate your commitment to be transparent with your customers. Maintaining solid and professional connections with your customers can be difficult without effective communication.

A data breach can be stressful, but your company will be better equipped to recover if you take the proper precautions. Conduct regular security inspections in the future to help prevent the probability of a similar incident occurring.

How To Report Cyber Crimes

If you suspect you’ve been the victim of a scam, take the following steps:

• If you have one, contact your IT/security department.
• Contact your financial institution right away to request a fund recall.
• Report any abnormalities with payroll deposits to your employer.
• Inform the Internet Crime Complaint Center about the attack (IC3). They’ll pass it on to federal, state, municipal, or foreign authorities. Make touch with your credit card company as well.
• If you’re disputing illegal transactions made on your card by scammers, or if you fear your card number has been compromised, tell them.
• If you or your company has been a victim of a network intrusion, data breach, or ransomware assault, please get in touch with your local FBI field office or report it online at tips.fbi.gov.

Conclusion

It’s not easy to keep the consequences of data breaches to a minimum. You must take the necessary precautions and remain vigilant. However, the effort required is far less than the Herculean challenge of regaining your identity after hackers have stolen it.

If you have been notified that your company has been breached, you may be feeling overwhelmed and unsure of what to do next. There are a few simple steps you can take to mitigate the damage and protect your data. Many businesses find themselves in this situation, and thankfully, some professionals can help. Protected Harbor is a leader in data breach response and protection and is here to help you get through this difficult time. We offer a range of services to our clients, including breach notification, 24×7 remote monitoring, phishing, ransomware safety, remote backup, protected data center, and much more. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you protect your data.

Introduction

From the year 2005 to 2019, the number of individuals affected by healthcare data breaches was 249.09 million. Out of which, 157.40 million individuals were affected from 2014 to 2019. Similarly, in 2020, over 34 million individuals were affected, followed by 45 million in 2021 alone. According to The Office for Civil Rights Department of Health and Human Services)

Due to advancements in IoT, smart devices, and information systems, healthcare systems have become computer-based. All the data and records are managed via computers and are stored in local or remote servers. These technologies have helped healthcare move from a paper-based system to Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. The EHR systems got much popularity in less time as they are cost-effective, fast, and better than many healthcare organizations adopting them.

E-health data is highly receptive, targeted most frequently by attackers. A long-term analysis of data breaches showed that healthcare records were exposed by internal and external attacks, such as hacking, theft/loss, unauthentic internal disclosure, and the improper disposal of unnecessary but sensitive data.

This article will aim at sharing insights on healthcare data breaches and the implications that these incidents can have on organizations that suffer from them. It will also serve as a guide for healthcare organizations to prevent or mitigate the impact of such occurrences.

Why is Healthcare Industry a Primary Target of Cyber-attacks?

The biggest reason the healthcare industry is the primary target of cyber-attacks is that the attackers get worth millions of dollars of data in a single breach. Healthcare is a $1.2 trillion industry. The hospitals and clinics have enough financial resources to pay the ransomware in the private sector. Whereas in the public sector, the situation is the opposite.

Another reason is the reliance of hospitals and clinics on outdated systems with minimal resilience to cyberattacks. On the other hand, the organizations using modern healthcare facilities are still vulnerable to security breaches even though they use electronic data sharing and virtual services to facilitate patients.

Furthermore, the healthcare industry is more prone to cyber-attacks due to its slow adoption of cybersecurity technologies and measures. According to IBM’s survey, only 23% of hospitals have deployed security automation tools. Only 6% or less IT budget in healthcare organizations is dedicated to cybersecurity, according to the HIMSS survey.

Healthcare data insights show that the number of individuals affected from 2015 to 2021 was three hundred twenty-eight million and ninety thousand. You can easily determine how much data could be stolen in a single data breach from this number.

Moreover, according to Black Book Market research, more than 93% of healthcare organizations faced data breaches in the past three years, and 57% had more than 5 data breaches in the same time frame.

Costs of Healthcare Data Breaches:

One of the primary reasons healthcare organizations are the target of cyber attackers is financial gain. According to a report published by IBM, a typical healthcare data breach costs $6.45 million to the organization. Usually, it fetches $8.19 million. However, an average data breach (25,575 compromised records) costs $15 million in the USA.

How do Cyber-attacks Happen in Healthcare?

Because healthcare organizations hold so much information of significant monetary and intelligence value to cybercriminals and nation-state actors, they are particularly vulnerable to and targeted by cyberattacks. Protected health information (PHI) of patients, financial information such as credit card and bank account numbers, personally identifying information (PII) such as Social Security numbers, and intellectual property relating to medical research and innovation are among the data sets targeted.

The most significant reasons for the security breaches in healthcare organizations are an inadequate employee and client training and the lack of usable security measures. Healthcare professionals are not tech-savvy enough to understand the consequences of a cyber-attack. According to HelloHealth, 90% of security breaches in the health sector happen due to human error, which means that hospital or clinic employees’ unintentional actions, such as downloading or clicking an attachment infected by malware, cause the data breaches.

The insiders are the other source for cyber attackers that help them steal the patient’s data. People working in any healthcare organization with access to confidential data sell that data to cybercriminals and earn a profit. One of the Accenture reports mentions that 29% of healthcare professionals knew someone selling the authorized access to the patient’s data. 47% of the healthcare professionals who took part in the survey mentioned that they were aware of data breaches in their organizations, out of which many were not reported.

The lack of cybersecurity experts is also one reason the healthcare sector faces many security breaches. The Black Book Research found that it takes healthcare organizations 70% more time to hire a cybersecurity professional than other IT jobs. This means that due to the lack of talent in cybersecurity, healthcare organizations are left with no choice except to rely on IT professionals with less or no knowledge to secure the institutions against data breaches and ever-evolving cyber attacks.

Type of Hacking and Cyberattakcs that Result in Healthcare Data Breaches:

Nowadays, stealing personal health information (PHIs) is common in the black market. According to Infosec Institute, a PHI could cost up to $363. For healthcare organizations, the cost per stolen record reaches approximately $355, whereas, for non-healthcare companies, it is almost $158 (half of what it is for the healthcare sector). From these stats, you can determine why healthcare is the primary target of cybercriminals.

However, different types of cybersecurity threats are faced by healthcare organizations:

Malware:

Malware is any software, link, or email, that infects the organization’s data as soon as someone clicks on it. Once a user clicks on malware, it hacks the organization’s data, steals, deletes, or misuses it while blocking critical files and applications access.

Ransomeware and Spyware:

Ransomeware is malware in which the attacker encrypts the files and data and demands some ransom to restore or decrypt the files. However, paying the ransom does not guarantee access or unlocking the files and data. In the first ten months of 2020, the ransomware attacks in healthcare organizations jumped 45%, which was more than double that of other industries.

Spyware is another malware. It is a way to monitor and report the activities of an individual or an organization to a third party for wicked actions.

Phishing and Spear Phishing:

A cyberattack in which the attacker approaches the employees of an organization in one way or another, such as via email, phone call, text message, or any other media acting as a legitimate professional or institution to gather some sensitive information. This information could be passwords, credit card details, and other personally identifiable information.

Spear Phishing is the same as phishing, except it targets specific individuals and organizations. It is much more difficult to detect and has become the cyberattack of choice due to remote health workers and fewer cybersecurity measures.

Denial of Service Attacks:

The denial of service attack targets a specific server, network, or IoT device by bringing up the flood of Internet traffic with an intent to exhaust the resources and bandwidth. Denial of Service attack prevents the healthcare professionals from accessing the network or devices to provide healthcare services or access the sensitive information for their jobs.

How can Healthcare Industry Avoid Data Breaches?

Healthcare organizations are expected to spend $125 billion on cybersecurity to avoid data breaches and security issues. As discussed earlier, the lack of proper education and staff training, and cybersecurity experts, the healthcare sector faces the most significant data breaches among the other industries. The appropriate staff training and education can help healthcare organizations secure their systems and avoid data breaches. Some of the measures that the health sectors can take are as follows:

• Investing in better IT infrastructure and staff training.
• Up-to-date cyber planning.
• Implementing Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) to mitigate the security risks.
• Investing in the latest technology and cybersecurity infrastructure.
• Conducting the training to educate the employees and healthcare professionals to learn about the systems and avoid opening or clicking any corrupted files.
• Consulting to a data center to store their data remotely. The data center will then be responsible for managing and securing the data from the cyber-criminals and any kind of cyberattacks.
• Conducting data analysis to record which data is being generated in which department and what information is being transferred from one place to another.
• Using time series analysis for data breach forecasting and risk forecasting.

Pro-Tip: Use Protected Harbor:

Protected Harbor builds a custom protocol for your firm from the ground up to safeguard your data center in the healthcare and medical industries against cyberattacks, outages, and downtime, among other things. Protected Harbor does this while ensuring HIPAA Compliance and securing the PHIs and EHRs. You can use this data center to avoid any risks associated with your data.

Why Choose Protected Harbor?

• Enhanced security
• 9% uptime
• Highest regulatory standards
• Experienced IT expert team
• 24×7 remote monitoring

Conclusion:

The implication is that the Healthcare sector is the primary target for cybercriminals as almost every one of us uses healthcare facilities. The amount of data generated, stored, and exchanged by healthcare organizations is extensive. This data includes sensitive data, electronic health records, and patients’ personal health information. Furthermore, all the information regarding internal entities is included in that data. Data confidentiality is difficult in this era of technology, networks, and the Internet as there are so many sources for cybercriminals to hack the systems used in the healthcare sector. The internal entities also serve as a source of providing authorized access to these criminals.