With healthcare being a top target in the world of cybercrime, it never hurts to do a review every so often of the landscape and of the players in the game. We’ll also take a look at how you might be compromised without even knowing it or suspecting it could happen. A Lay of the...
At times, it feels as if we could start every week with this sentence: “There’s a new tactic being used by cybercriminals to trick unsuspecting victims.” And the sophistication level of the new tactics is off the charts. So, what are we dealing with as of late? Well, where should we start… Hidden text is...
We all know (or should know) that human error accounts for the majority of breaches. Phishing gives hackers entry to a business’s front door by manipulating the employees who work there. Phishing is when a cyberattack is disguised and delivered using email as the carrier or weapon. Through very convincing and cleverly designed messages, the...
Is the healthcare sector uniquely vulnerable to phishing attacks? A recent report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association says yes, with research to back that claim. A team of researchers led by William Gordon, MD of Harvard Medical School and Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital set out to answer the question, “Are...
Pawnee County Memorial Hospital (PCMH) in Pawnee City, Nebraska has notified 7,038 patients that a hacker may have accessed some of their protected health information. The incident was discovered on November 29, 2018, when PCMH learned that their business e-mail system was compromised by a malware virus. A forensic computer investigator was hired immediately following...
A recent survey conducted by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the consulting firm Accenture surveyed 1,300 U.S. physicians to find out about their experiences and attitudes towards cybersecurity. Unsettling findings in the survey revealed a lack of cybersecurity education among physicians. The five key findings of the survey as reported by the AMA and...
It’s no secret that employees violate security policies. Whether we’d like to admit it or not, there’s a good chance we have all violated a security policy once upon a time. Sometimes, employees violate policies to save time or make their job easier, and sometimes, they don’t even know they’re doing it. How do you...
On October 5, California-based Gold Coast Health Plan (GCHP) informed the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) that a phishing attack may have exposed the protected health information of 37,005 plan members. The attack occurred when hackers successfully tricked a GCHP employee with a phishing email, which allowed the hackers access to that employee’s email account...
Cybercriminals have been targeting the healthcare industry for years. As healthcare has become the second largest sector of the U.S. economy, it should come as no surprise that the industry receives special attention from hackers. Aside from its size, what else accounts for the indisputable interest cybercriminals have in exploiting healthcare? Hackers Set Sights on...
Business email compromise (BEC) scams remain one of the most widely used attack vectors among cybercriminals to date. In fact, cybercriminals are finding so much success in exploiting human vulnerabilities through BEC scams that their frequencies have been dramatically increasing. What is a BEC scam? In a BEC scam, the attacker gains access to an...
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