IMPACT OF CYBER ATTACKS ON HEALTHCARE FIRMS
With the outset of advanced technology, all our lifestyles have been modified, and people have been more inclined towards a life that is dependent on this technology. Undoubtedly, this has made all our lives so much easier and saved a lot of time as well. However, there is always a downside to every human-made object, and it has made its impact on the global healthcare sector as well.
As a result, cybercrimes like ransomware attacks have been quite widespread over the last few years and have attacked the healthcare sector as well. This has been compromising the confidential and sensitive data of patients and other staff in the healthcare sector. Sophos has recently launched the State of Ransomware in Healthcare 2022, which is an in-depth report highlighting the annual study meted out by healthcare IT professionals through their experience of real-world ransomware. The data for the analysis was collected from 5,600 IT professionals, including 381 in healthcare, from around 31 countries.
The prime analysis that the research brings out is the striking relationship between ransomware and cyber insurance in the healthcare department, focusing on how much and how often ransom was paid by the insurance providers against claims by healthcare. It was seen that ransomware attacks on healthcare sectors have doubled when almost 66% of all the healthcare organizations that were surveyed had fallen prey in 2021, as compared to a minimum of 34% in the year 2020.
The most threatening risk that the healthcare sector saw in this new year was that there was an extreme hike of almost 69% in volume and perceived complexity of around 67% of cyber-attacks, along with the second-highest increase in the impact of such cyber attacks, with a striking rate of 59%. It has also been recorded that 61% of the healthcare organizations that have paid the ransoms have gotten back their encrypted data, as compared to the global average of 46% in other sectors. However, as compared to a wholesome rate of 69% in 2020, only 65% of the data was retrieved back in the year 2021 by healthcare organizations and only 2% of organizations got all their information successfully retrieved in 2021, down from 8% in 2020. Where other sectors have paid an average amount of $812k, the healthcare sector has paid the least amount of ransom, which is around $197k in the year 2021.
It has been analyzed that even after the payment of ransom, the retrieval of the information takes rather more time. Where 44% of the healthcare organizations received their data within a week, last year almost 25% of the organizations took over a month. The report has recorded low cyber insurance coverage in healthcare, but cyber insurance has been quite advantageous to 97% of the organizations. The healthcare sector is concentrating on mitigating the financial risks associated with the attacks as the growth in ransomware attacks shows the success of the model in general.
