#Hackers Archives

Healthcare Cyber Security growing Paramountcy

Posted on 23/03/202128/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Over the last year, the healthcare industry has become a target of strategic interest amongst cyber criminals. Owing to its troves of valuable data, healthcare has never been as vulnerable to cyber attacks as it is now. As per a report by HIPAA Journal, healthcare institutions reported 616 data breaches of 500 or more records in 2020. Moreover, the report also revealed that 28,756,445 healthcare records were exposed.

With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, hackers rapidly evolved their tactics to exploit the fears escalating amongst the population. This has spurred the need to adopt cyber security best practices for keeping pace with evolving threats, especially in healthcare. Cyber criminals have reframed their phishing attempts to launch targeted cyber attacks by taking advantage of the COVID-19 fears.

Those working on the response have become prime targets. Even the World Health Organization (WHO) and the research firms developing treatments and vaccines for the coronavirus are being targeted. Moreover, as per Becker’s Hospital Review, data breaches cost the healthcare industry nearly $5.6 billion every year.

Major Cyber Attacks on the Healthcare Industry in 2020

It’s widely believed that in 2021 the healthcare industry will continue to be the most targeted industry by cyber criminals. Here are some major cyber attacks targeting the healthcare industry in 2020:

The year 2020 witnessed the first fatality due to a ransomware attack when a hospital in Germany was hit by a ransomware attack in September.
The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) reported that APT29 targeted COVID-19 vaccine development.
The Universal Health Services (UHS) health system suffered a ransomware attack across its 400 locations in September.
Data allegedly stolen from five different healthcare entities was posted for sale on the dark web by the hacking groups behind REvil, SunCrypt, NetWalker and Pysa or Mespinoza ransomware variants.
UCSF paid a ransom of $1.14 million after the NetWalker ransomware affected multiple servers of its School of Medicine.
In October 2020, DHS CISA issued a warning of an Emotet resurgence, problematic ransomware that has targeted 24% of the most prominent hospitals.

How to Protect Healthcare Institutions Against Vicious Cyber Attacks?

With the pandemic expected to continue into the foreseeable future, the healthcare industry is hounded by several cyber security issues. Cyber attacks on healthcare facilities can have consequences beyond breach of privacy and financial loss.

Therefore, it has become essential for these institutions to take the necessary precautions and get ahead of threats. Here are a few effective cyber security measures that can offer protection against the cyber threats plaguing the healthcare industry:

Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Implementation of MFA on all the applicable endpoints across the enterprise networks is an effective way to get rid of some of the most disastrous vulnerabilities. According to a report by Microsoft, enabling MFA can block over 99.9% of all automated account compromise attacks. With billions of stolen credentials for sale, it has become extremely important to adopt MFA as a basic security protocol. This applies not just to the healthcare industry but everywhere.

Vulnerability Management

Cyber criminals often exploit unpatched vulnerabilities in the IT infrastructure of their target organization to ensure the success of their attempt. Hence, it is imperative to make sure that all the security patches are updated regularly. Overlooking even a minuscule vulnerability in your organization’s security framework can have severe ramifications. Conducting periodic Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing can significantly help you keep your company’s IT infrastructure free from any weaknesses, mitigating the risk of suffering a cyber attack.

Generating Awareness

Educating your staff about cyber risks and the ways to mitigate them is one of the most effective ways of meeting the challenges posed by the current cyber threat landscape. If every individual on staff is vigilant enough, it will be difficult for the threat actors to find an opening for an attack. Organizations can use innovative cyber security awareness tools like ThreatCop to train employees in the art of avoiding cyber attacks.

Backup Storage and Restoration

The best way to minimize damage caused by a cyber attack is to employ backup, offline storage and restoration. This standard security protocol is especially effective against ransomware attacks. If you are unable to prevent a cyber attack from hitting its mark in the first place, it is essential to have a plan. The next best course of action is to ensure that you have a reliable offline storage and restoration option.

To summarize, cyber security in healthcare is not just about protecting an organization but also protecting those they serve. Consequently, it is extremely important for healthcare providers to enforce strict security policies and keep evolving them according to the changing cyber threat landscape.

“Cyber Security Awareness” – SMEs shield against cyber-attacks

Posted on 21/03/202129/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

In today’s world, cyber security infrastructure and awareness are prerequisites for the smooth running of almost every industry. It is mainly because cyber attacks have the potential to negatively affect an organization’s efficiency and output. Cyber security awareness is even more essential for small businesses as they are being plagued by a variety of cyber threats including cryptojacking, ransomware, phishing, password tracking attacks and advanced persistent threat attacks (APT).

The major reason for the presence of small businesses in the cyber criminals’ target range is the low complexity of their cyber security infrastructure. Reportedly, the most common challenges faced by a small business emanate from employees’ negligence. With limited resources and less complex infrastructure, generating awareness is the only way for small businesses to safeguard themselves against cyber threats.

According to National Cyber Security Coordinator Rajesh Pant, “To know how to defend yourself or your organization, it is important to understand how the attacks happen and what methodology do cyber attackers use to harm organizations.”

Risks Faced by Small Businesses Due to Inefficient Cyber Security Management

Gauging the vulnerabilities and leakages in any particular department is difficult until and unless it is put to test. In absence of such introspection, a small business risks losing a lot of valuable time and money. The major risks faced by small businesses include-

Cyber attackers can steal an employee’s credentials to carry out a number of criminal activities like identity theft and targeted spear-phishing attacks. They can also use these stolen credentials to access your company’s corporate network.
A compromised cyber security infrastructure can lead to a data breach and the loss or exposure of sensitive information.
Successful payment frauds or theft of sensitive bank details and passwords can result in substantial monetary losses for the company and its employees.
Recovery from a cyber attack including the costs of cleaning up the systems can serve as a huge financial hit.
Damaged reputation and the loss of customer base are other major consequences of suffering a cyber attack.

Upping the Ante

Adopting the best cyber security practices has become a vital step for all small businesses to stay afloat. The following are some effective measures that small business organizations can take to secure their data and systems-

Deploy cyber security awareness tools where employees are subjected to a cyber attack drill and their reaction towards such a dummy attack is recorded and analyzed. These dummy attacks involve different attack vectors and customized templates to generate cyber security awareness.
Regularly upgrade the already existing cyber security infrastructure to a more complex one.
Use VAPT services to identify the vulnerabilities in your organization’s cyber security infrastructure and correct them as soon as possible.
Remove the software and hardware that is no longer in use to prevent it from getting corrupted. Along with this, update the already existing software regularly.
Employ cyber security experts who are equipped with the knowledge of dealing with cyber attacks in minimum reaction time.
Restrict or ban the use of removable media in the organization to secure its digital infrastructure.
Make sure the data is encrypted while posting any of it online, allowing only authorized users to access it.
Restrict data access to a bare minimum for preventing data breaches and insider threats.

According to the trends observed globally, small business organizations bear the major brunt of cyber attacks as they don’t have sufficient reactionary capacity to defend themselves against such attacks. As recovering from a successful cyber attack can be an uphill task, cyber security awareness for the employees takes a front seat in such respect along with the review of the organization’s level of preparedness and reaction time.

Banking Industry: A witness of Cybersecurity Challenges

Posted on 18/03/202129/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Cybersecurity attacks are evolving, getting more sophisticated, more frequent, and spreading worldwide. It seems like not a day is passed without an organization suffering a data breach or a customer of a bank losing money from the account through stolen credentials.

While most industries worldwide are affected by the imminent peril of cybersecurity threats, the banking industry is one of the prime targets. After all, the sector deals with what the attackers want the most, ‘money and personal information’.

Cyberattacks: The Roaring Trade

Cyberattacks on financial firms have become a flourishing money-making business for cybercriminals. As per the report from a cybersecurity firm’s research, cyberattacks against banks spiked by a massive 238% from the beginning of February to the end of April 2020.

In 2017, financial firms saw the highest volume of cybersecurity attacks over any other industry. This threat landscape is widening as it is getting more sophisticated and diverse. The annual cost of cyberattacks in the banking industry has reached $18.3 million per enterprise.

We have witnessed cybersecurity attacks making headlines for several years. Some of the most headline-making cyberattacks have been the DDoS attacks. These attacks flood customer-facing bank websites with traffic and take them offline or attacks on the Swift based money transfer systems, among others.

We have also witnessed big banks suffer these attacks over a decade. Recently, hackers stole $81 million from the Central Bank of Bangladesh. In fact, last month, a powerful DDoS attack struck Hungarian banks and telecom services. It was the most powerful and one of the biggest cyberattacks Hungary had ever encountered.

As fast as the organizations are adopting new-age technologies, hackers are constantly finding ways to penetrate and target exploitable security vulnerabilities. Thus, making it evident that cybersecurity attacks are increasing rapidly every passing year.

A Strong Barricade For The Assets

Banks not only store money but also gather network activities and personal information of the customers. Information that includes names, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, and dates of birth. This data has inherent value and can be used for other malicious activities such as identity theft, which can often lead to more disastrous and grievous consequences.

In today’s world, cybercriminals are getting advanced with modern technologies. They develop custom-built malicious code that is not necessarily picked up routinely by antivirus protection. So it is very important for the sector to address the modern times demand.

The banking industry needs to realize the assets they have in store and what mechanisms might be used by attackers to get into their organization. They need to identify the weak points and the measures needed to strengthen the IT infrastructure, based on the risk assessment to defend against those potential threats.

It is high time to shift from passive cybersecurity to active cybersecurity, which is switching from what is largely reactive to embracing the white hacker to test the strength of IT infrastructure security. Regardless of how sophisticated the attack is, it mostly starts by trying to trick the employees into doing something that jeopardizes the system.

Therefore, the industry should not only focus on the systems but also get the employees to take the measurements to defend the loophole. Making the employees understand the approaches that these attackers take and what can be done to minimize the exposure to that risk.

According to a report by Deloitte India, cybersecurity attacks are getting complex each passing day and to prevent these threats banks will also need to hire Chief Risk Officers. The officers who are experienced in taking responsibility and lead the firm with military-level cybersecurity solutions to identify the modern sophisticated cyberattacks.

Having a CRO (Chief Risk Officers) will help the firm in managing the operations to prevent cybersecurity threats. It can also fill the responsibilities, including identifying, evaluating, reporting the threats and monitoring the external and internal cyber threats to the firm.

Methodology For Mitigating The Threat

It’s about time for financial firms or any industry to stop relying on the obsolete IT infrastructure. Instead, they should adopt cybersecurity measures that are more complex and sophisticated than ever before to prevent prevailing and emerging cyber threats.

Here are some basic steps the financial firms can implement to minimize the risk of a cyberattack:

Identify and classify the assets- It is important to identify and categorize the information assets, based on its level of sensitivity, value, and criticality to the bank. Information assets including various categories of data that are highly-restricted, confidential, internal use, and the public.

Risk assessment- It is advisable for every bank to prepare a cybersecurity risk assessment, and implement a cybersecurity protection plan to address those threats identified in the risk assessment procedure. This helps the organization to mitigate the factors that cause disruption in running a smooth business operation.

Identify threats and vulnerabilities– Threat and vulnerability can be subjected to a person, an organization, weaknesses in the system or the network. So it is not a necessity but mandatory for the organization to identify these threats and vulnerabilities through penetration testing in order to patch the weaknesses that can be exploited to gain access and affect the system.

Analyze risk- As mentioned earlier, the bank has the assets that the hackers sought for. So, analyzing the risk to these assets based on the impact or criticality is a way to go for an organization. The process should occur on a regular basis to identify any new potential threats.

Educate employees- All employees should be aware of the threats and consequences of ignoring it. For instance, they should be aware of the hazard by clicking a malicious link or opening an attachment from an unknown person. So, it is crucial to provide cybersecurity awareness training for the employees with tools that helps in raising awareness to prevent cyberattacks. It is particularly important because most of the cyber incidents are the result of “human error.”

Tag: #Hackers

Healthcare Cyber Security growing Paramountcy

Major Cyber Attacks on the Healthcare Industry in 2020