Ransomware and malware: The top cyber criminals exploits

When it comes to the cybersecurity, healthcare agencies are most concerned over the social engineering, information theft and internal threats. And they perceive ransomware and malware as the top ways that cyber criminals are exploiting their weaknesses. Ransomware and malware are believed to be the top cyber criminals exploits.

Those are among the findings of a new survey of almost 200 members of the Association for Executives in Healthcare Information Security (AEHIS) and College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME).

The top-ranked potential security susceptibilities in the survey that worry AEHIS and CHIME members are data exposure, security misconfiguration and worst authentication/session management. Although, they showed that the most usual security risks to their agencies are social engineering, insider threats and the IoT (internet of things). Ransomware and malware are believed to be the top cyber criminals exploits.

Asked how their agencies would perform if systems or information were compromised by a targeted attack compared with a year ago, survey respondents claimed that they are now better ready for a security tragedy by having systems in place. Furthermore, they assert that their capabilities for discovering a security tragedy and recovering from it are presently better in contrast with a year ago.

Avi Rubin, director of the Health and Medical Security Lab at Johns Hopkins University, claims that there were no surprises in the outcomes of the survey and that they were exactly what he would have hoped.

CHIME Vice President for Federal Affairs Mari Savickis presented the findings of the survey this week to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Cybersecurity Task Force, mandated by Congress to establish suggestions to counter the healthcare industry’s growing cyber threats putting patient data at risk.

While healthcare agencies stated that they require greater assistance from federal agencies to make better information sharing and threat assessments, almost 65% of survey respondents showed that they were somewhat confident or not confident at all that federal legislators understand the significance of cybersecurity enough to support primary information security initiatives.

Nevertheless, they need lawmakers to adopt incentives that will motivate greater information sharing, involving shielding agencies that voluntarily work to make better security across the delivery system from government audits and reduce the top cyber criminals exploits i.e. Ransomware and Malware.