Healthcare’s Ransomware Attackers Are Addicted to Encryption [Video]

Fraud Management & Cybercrime , Healthcare , Industry Specific

Extortionist Crypto-Locking Hackers Keep Hitting Healthcare Sector, Experts Report (HealthInfoSec) • November 1, 2023    

Once ransomware hackers get inside a healthcare sector organization’s systems, 3 in 4 attackers will also maliciously encrypt data, says security firm Sophos.

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Attackers successfully encrypted data in 75% of ransomware attacks on healthcare sector entities, Sophos said in an annual report on healthcare cybersecurity trends published Wednesday.

“This likely reflects the ever-increasing skill level of adversaries who continue to innovate and refine their approaches,” Sophos said.

On the flip side, that means only about 24% of healthcare organizations successfully disrupted a ransomware attack before the attackers encrypted their data – down from 34% in 2022, the research found.

The report is based on a vendor-agnostic survey of 3,000 information technology and cybersecurity organizations across 233 …