Targeting of Providers, Plans and Partners Since 2009, healthcare breaches have affected the personal information of 370 million people. Quick math says that’s more than the entire U.S. population, and that’s only counting the major breaches affecting 500 people or more. The situation is growing worse. In just the last three years, the volume and frequency of breaches have nearly doubled, from 368 in 2018 to 715 in 2021. And the nation is on...

Red-Teaming Tool Poses Ongoing Risks When Used by Hackers, HHS Warns The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Information Security’s HC3 unit says attackers are weaponizing legitimate security tools. Russian hackers deployed Cobalt Strike’s command-and-control function during their attack against SolarWinds’ network management software. Hackers who earlier this year got into Cisco corporate IT...

Cyberweapon-Grade Hacking Tools Pose Danger for Financial Sector Cyberthieves traditionally on the lower rung of hacking abilities now have access to nation-state-class malicious software, warn close observers of the criminal dark web. The appearance on criminal forums of tools capable of infecting a computer’s boot firmware or malware that evades antivirus detection is a consequence of years of state-sponsored development of cyber...

Use of Social Engineering, Phishing to Divert Payments Cybercriminals are stealing multimillion-dollar payouts from healthcare payment processors by compromising user login credentials, the FBI warns the healthcare industry. In a recent alert, federal agents say they’ve received multiple reports of cybercriminals redirecting healthcare payments into their pockets. According to the FBI, cybercriminals used employees’ publicly...

$155 Million in fines and settlements. While physical data breaches have declined substantially in the last 10 years, they still can happen without proper diligence. That lack of diligence and vendor oversight has led to a $35M fine for Morgan Stanley from the SEC and a class-action settlement of $60M over the same breach. This is in addition to a $60M fine from the Comptroller of the Currency in 2020. All for improperly decommissioning server...

Some 60 breaches affecting about 2.5 million individuals were added in July to the federal tally of major health data breaches. Those incidents continued a trend playing out in 2022: Large hacking incidents predominately involving ransomware attacks against providers, vendors, or both are responsible for an overwhelming amount of data theft. About 80% of the major breaches reported were related to hacking/IT incidents, and these breaches...

AWS Domains Used to Send Phishing Emails and Steal Credentials Cybercriminals are using Amazon Web Services to create phishing pages that bypass security scanners and scam victims into handing over credentials. The scammers send targets what appears to be a standard password expiration email or other emails meant to create a sense of urgency. The emails come from legitimate AWS domains, but a closer look shows the inclusion of false nicknames,...

New draft of federal cybersecurity guidance could help healthcare organizations avoid regulatory fines in the wake of breaches. Federal regulators are looking for the adoption of “recognized security practices,” when investigating the aftermath of a breach involving protected health information. In 2021, Congress told the Department of Health and Human Services to consider whether a medical center or business associate can show that it...

Cybersecurity, or the lack of it, is something that we all need to be concerned about. In no industry is that more readily apparent than the financial sector. As the threats continue to evolve, it’s important that we don’t forget about older threats that continue to pose serious risks to financial institutions. Ideally, all organizations would rapidly expunge known vulnerabilities from their networks, starting with the most severe bugs that...

Depending on where you put its tracking pixel, it might be. Lawsuit: Facebook Is Collecting Patient Data of ‘Millions’ Class Action Alleges Meta Pixel Code Tracks Websites, Patient Portal Interactions A class action is alleging Facebook unlawfully collects patient data from the online portals of hundreds of medical providers without knowledge or consent. The lawsuit, filed Friday (June 17, 2022) by an anonymous “John...

Canada’s Desjardins Settles Data Breach Lawsuit for $155M Highlights the risks posed by insider threats and lack of information segmentation. The cost of the settlement adds on to the costs the bank has already carried resolving the breach they discovered in 2019. The breach, which was publicly disclosed in June 2019, involved a “malicious” insider stealing and selling personal details for 4.2 million active customers of the...

Why that might not be a good thing for Nebraska. Based on a study of thousands of cases that it has worked, incident response firm Coveware has found that the number of firms paying a ransom has dropped from 85% in Q1 2019 to 46% in Q1 2022. When victims do pay a ransom, in Q1 2022, they paid an average of $211,529, down 34% from the previous quarter, Coveware found. It attributes this to fewer victims paying, attackers overall infecting...

Authorities Warn Healthcare, Public Health Sectors of Latest Concerns Federal authorities are warning the healthcare sector of potential threats involving Lapsus$, including those related to the extortion group’s recent hack of identity management vendor Okta. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center, or HC3, in an advisory issued on April 7, warns of attack threats to the sector...

Declining Loss Ratios May Allow Insurance Premium Increases to Moderate in Late 2022 An improvement in loss ratios for cyber insurance providers in 2021 means the rapid rise in premiums might, at last, subside later this year. The loss ratio, simply insurer payouts versus premiums earned, declined for the first time since 2018 despite the frequency and severity of claims filed for cyberattacks increasing yet again in 2021. The improvement was...

The number of major health data breaches and the number of individuals posted to the HHS “Wall of Shame” so far in 2022 has surged in recent weeks as reports of large hacking incidents continue to flow into regulators. As of last week, the HIPAA Breach Reporting Tool website shows that 117 breaches affecting about 5.32 million people have been posted in 2022. That’s an increase of nearly 83% in the number of breaches posted on the HHS...

Ransomware has been on a dramatic upswing over the last couple of years. The proliferation of Ransomware As A Service (RAAS), the subsequent lowering of barriers for both criminal groups and state actors, as well as the payment of ransoms have helped drive this dramatic increase. According to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), most ransomware attacks start through phishing, exploitation of remote desktop...

Memo to businesses: Ransomware attacks are worse than ever, and unless you prepare, don’t be surprised if you or your business is the next victim, warn government cybersecurity czars. Joint advisory cybersecurity authorities in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom observed a marked increase in sophisticated, high-impact ransomware incidents against critical infrastructure organizations globally throughout 2021. They expect...

Healthcare entities should implement a more “proactive preparedness” approach for protecting their electronic health record/electronic medical record systems. Federal regulators warn that these are an increasingly attractive target for cyberattacks and other breaches. The DHHS Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center, in a threat brief issued Thursday, reinforced that EHRs/EMRs are profitable to cybercriminals. Largely due to...

The Ripple Effects that Extend Outward from a Breach According to the Verizon 2020 Data Breach report, 22% of all security incidents are perpetuated by insiders. In addition, the costs of insider breaches – caused either by human error or bad actors have – risen by 47% over the past two years. As an organization, a certain amount of trust is required to ensure that business runs smoothly. But, given the inherent risks involved, that trust...

Alert Comes as Health Entities Globally Continue Battling Cyberattacks, Fallout The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has posted a warning to the healthcare sector about increasing threats involving Pysa ransomware and the cybercriminal gang Mespinoza — also known as Gold Burlap and Cyborg Spider — which operates the malware variant. In an alert, the DHHS Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center, or HC3, warns that since 2018,...