Latest in a String of Similar Proposed Class Actions Across Healthcare Industry The University of Iowa Health Care is facing a proposed class action lawsuit alleging it used website tracking pixels to transmit patient data to Facebook. The claim is the latest in a string of legal actions against other healthcare centers that pasted Facebook Pixel and similar online behavior tracking codes into their patient portals. Concerns, and lawsuits, over...

The enhanced security provided by EMV chips has significantly impacted card fraud at retail locations. The continued presence of the magnetic stripe as a backup leads to continuing fraud losses. However, as always, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and criminals continue to use a variety of ways to obtain and exploit card information. Several of these ways continue to rely on the presence of the magnetic strip in order to either obtain...

Study: Unpatched Nurse Call Systems, Printers and IP Cameras Top the List   Globally, hospitals are expected to deploy over 7 million medical devices by 2026 — or more than 3,850 devices per hospital, according to a study conducted last year by research firm Juniper Research. Many IoT device makers and users have lagged in updating these products to patch vulnerabilities, said Scott Singer, managing director of the University of...

Chinese Hackers and Others Increasingly Favor Unpatched Vulnerabilities According to security researchers, last year was another bonanza in zero-days for Chinese state hackers. They’re also predicting a permanent uptick in nation-state exploitation of yet-unpatched vulnerabilities. Data taken from original research by cybersecurity firm Mandiant and open-source reporting suggests zero-day exploitation fluctuates from year to year but is...

After Surge in 2nd Half, 1,802 Breach Notifications Issued in 2022; Over 440 Million Individuals Affected After a slow start, likely due to geopolitical factors, 2022 was another bumper year for data breaches in the United States. U.S. organizations issued 1,802 data breach notifications in 2022, affecting more than 400 million individuals, the Identity Theft Resource Center reports. That figure is just 60 breaches shy of the 1,862 breaches in...

Bad news for ransomware groups: Experts find that getting a payday is harder as the world fortifies against the onslaught of criminal malware. The good news is that more would-be victims are getting robust defenses in place, including well-rehearsed incident response plans, which make executing a successful attack harder. Also good news, law enforcement agencies mobilize earlier to assist victims, and by doing so, they’re learning better...

Both Ransomware Groups Pose Serious Concerns to Sector, Warns HHS HC3 The U.S. government is warning that Healthcare entities should be on high alert for signs of the new BlackCat and Royal ransomware-as-a-service groups. On January 12th, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center issued a threat brief that warns that BlackCat conducts triple extortion, meaning it doesn’t just...

Trojan Impersonates More Than 400 Financial and Crypto Exchange Apps The Godfather banking Trojan is causing serious issues in the financial sector due to its ability to mimic the appearance of more than 400 applications, including leading financial and crypto exchange applications. So far, it has targeted institutions in 16 countries. Research from security intelligence firm Group-IB says the Godfather Trojan reappeared in September with...

The number of successful ransomware attacks has doubled in the last 4 years. But there are concrete steps a healthcare organization can take to avoid costly — and potentially deadly — downtime and better protect themselves against an attack. 1. Move from on-premises servers and backups to the cloud. Doing so outsources availability, uptime, and security to the SaaS vendor and also facilitates better backup and recovery if something does happen....

QBot Backdoor Opens Systems to Loading Cobalt Strike, Ransomware and Other Malware Researchers say the Black Basta group is dropping QBot malware — also called QakBot — in a widespread ransomware campaign targeting mostly U.S.-based companies. QBot malware is a banking Trojan primarily designed to steal banking data, including browser information, keystrokes and credentials. Its previous targets include JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of...