Healthcare Organizations and Cyberthreats. The new reality.

In December 2021, the Maryland Department of Health suffered from a network security incident. Its webpage’s downtime and inability to update data on the current and critical coronavirus case rates lasted for a total of nine days. 

Shortly after the incident had been detected, official department representatives stated, “the department is focused on gaining full visibility into the affected network infrastructure and working to bring affected IT systems back online following the hack”, yet declined to answer questions about the cause of the hacking incident.

The Health Department’s web resources went down earlier in 2021 following yet another security incident. “A number of state agencies worked together with federal and state law enforcement offices to address the incidents and to gather additional information”, stated the Healthcare Department spokesperson.  

These cyberattacks mark the latest example of increased hacking activity targeting healthcare-related organizations during the pandemic.  

“There have been more than 100 publicly reported ransomware attacks on health care providers in 2020 alone, more than double the amount in 2019”, according to the cybersecurity firm, Recorded Future. 

During the Fall season of 2020, several US Hospital’s computer networks were attacked. This forced the University of Vermont Health Network to delay chemotherapy and mammogram appointments. 

The Los Angeles chapter of Planned Parenthood suffered a large ransomware attack in October 2021 that compromised the personal information of about 400,000 patients. 

In healthcare security, critical tasks include protecting personally identifiable information (PII), health information (PHI), and ensuring proper visibility and options to mitigate emerging threats. 

“The average total cost of a data breach has reached $3.86 million”, states The Cost of a Data Breach Report 2020 created by IBM Security. The healthcare sector has consistently reached the highest financial losses caused by cyberattacks. The average data breach cost in the healthcare industry reached $7.13 million in the year 2020. 

Healthcare is one of the key industries covered by Klik Solutions expertise. Medical technology, including electronic medical records (EMR), telehealth services and mobile devices, HIPPA, and other regulations compliance are quite complex for healthcare practices of all sectors and sizes. Klik Solutions Health IT Services are focused on relieving the burden of high costs, complexity and compliance for clinics, medical offices, and hospitals. We provide a wide range of services from supporting end-users and installing servers to cybersecurity and Cloud solutions.  

Don’t put your practice and patients at risk, choose Klik Solutions, your reliable IT partner right now!