It's not a surprise that there has been a significant increase in healthcare cyber attacks, but the numbers revealed by a new Bitglass study are nevertheless eye-popping: an increase of over 55% in 2020.
Cyber Security
Cyber criminals, state-sponsored hackers and even the occasional disgruntled employee are constantly looking to gain unauthorized access for a variety of purposes: theft of money, cyber espionage, personal information for sale or for use in scams, and damage to critical infrastructure for just a few of the most common.
So how does an organization mitigate an entire world full of continual cyber attacks? Just as buildings have a number of necessary elements of physical security: access control, cameras, alarms and so on; there are similar key elements of cyber security that are absolutely vital for just about any modern business.
It starts with identifying and closing the most common doors that attackers use. For example, phishing attacks on employees are far and away the most common initial point of entry. The breach of even a low-level employee account can quickly turn into an escalation in access privileges and the ability to reach sensitive information. This is also true of smart devices, which are generally more poorly secured than computers and phones.
The annual ENISA threat landscape report is one of the most helpful tools for keeping a finger on the pulse of current trends in cyber threats. This year's report highlights the dramatic rise in denial of service and cryptojacking attacks.
Cloud computing has evolved rapidly and brought new risks to cloud security. Companies need to find ways to securely use multiple cloud services and applications.
Apple boasts of stopping some $1.5 billion in attempted app fraud in 2020 and removing one million malicious apps, but complaints of app-based scams are still quite common.
Generative AI models in the style of ChatGPT are being sold that promise to help create malware, write phishing emails, set up attack sites, scan for vulnerabilities, and more. The latest DarkBART and DarkBERT projects have been trained on dark web sites.
Privilege solutions wield a transformative influence on the realm of cybersecurity, with two essential components, Privileged Identity Management (PIM) and Privileged Endpoint Management (PEM), taking center stage.
Third wave AI cybersecurity uses a proactive, singular AI algorithm applied to all data on the network and is a predictive approach that alerts analysts before an attack occurs.
With the significant increase in the number of cyberattacks, focus of employees returning to the office should not only be on healthcare-related practices but must also address hardware security risks.
We must advance our understanding and catch up to hackers by proclaiming that the security perimeter, as we knew it, no longer exists. When proof of identity is all we need to access our most sensitive, critical data, then the security perimeter is each and every one of us.
Israeli media reported that several Israeli companies and a nonprofit were breached in a new cyber attack wave attributed to an Iranian ransomware gang motivated by Middle Eastern geopolitics.










