The Leading Business Education Network for Doctors, Financial Advisors and Health Industry Consultants

By Darrell Pruitt DDS

***

***

Ransomware is getting worse, not better.

One doesn’t see this in dental literature, but ransomware is not going away. It is getting worse. “Ransomware Victim Count Increased by 75% in 2023” By Steve Alder for The HIPAA Journal, Jun 4, 2024. https://www.hipaajournal.com/ransomware-victim-count-increased-by-75-in-2023/

A new report from the Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant suggests several reasons for the increase in attacks. “First, there has been a resetting of the cybe rcriminal ecosystem after a tumultuous year in 2022, an influx of new actors conducting attacks, new partnerships between existing groups, and members of disrupted, prolific ransomware groups such as Conti starting up their own RaaS operations. While the attacks in 2023 largely followed the same patterns as the previous year, there were some notable changes with several groups trialing new tactics, techniques, and procedures.

For example, to increase the pressure on victims to pay, attacks on healthcare providers saw extortion demands issued to patients whose data were stolen, threatening to publish their medical data if they did not personally pay a ransom. The ALPHV group created a searchable database to make stolen data more accessible, and threats were issued to report attacks on publicly traded companies to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).”

Imagine how ransomware would affect your practice if the extortion scheme bypassed you to directly threaten your patients – and blamed you for not paying the “reasonable” ransom demand.

COMMENTS APPRECIATED

Thank You

***

***

Filed under: "Doctors Only", Career Development, Experts Invited, Information Technology, Pruitt's Platform | Tagged: ALPHV, Conti, cyber attack, Darrell Pruitt, DDS, dental industry, dental industry secret, dental secret, HIPAA, HIPAA Journal, HIT, IT, Mandiant, Pruitt, RaaS, RansomWare, SEC | Leave a comment »