A Microsoft investigation published earlier this week revealed that ransomware attacks on the healthcare sector are rising and threatening lives.
The report, which uses both internal corporate data and external data, shows a 300% spike in ransomware attacks on the health sector since 2015, as well as an increase in stroke and cardiac arrest cases at hospitals receiving patients from nearby facilities that have been paralysed by similar assaults.
It all amounts to a worrisome pattern that began during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when certain ransomware gangs pledged not to attack the healthcare industry.
“That [pledge has] been shoved off the table, unfortunately, and we are seeing a broader targeting of everything that has to do with health care, from hospital systems to clinics to doctors’ offices — really, anything where patient care can be impacted,” Sherrod DeGrippo, director of threat intelligence strategy at Microsoft, stated. “Threat actors know people’s lives are at stake, and therefore the organization is more likely to pay.”
According to Microsoft's second-quarter 2024 data, health care is one of the top ten most targeted sectors, with an average payment of $4.4 million reported in a survey of health care organisations. Additionally, Microsoft analysts believe Iranian gangs are mostly targeting healthcare organisations.
A research published last year discovered that ransomware attacks on hospitals have a spillover effect, with unaffected institutions seeing an increase in patients, resulting in stroke cases soaring by 113% and cardiac arrest cases reaching 81%. Those cardiac arrest instances also had lower survival rates.
“We know that these types of incidents have impacts on many of the technologies, such as CT scanners or laboratory machines that are used to take care of patients suffering from things like heart attack, stroke or sepsis,” Jeff Tully, co-director and of the University of California San Diego Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity and co-author of that study, noted. “And we know that there are delays in our ability to care for these patients during these types of down times.”
Tully stated that the centre was working on developing a ransomware response playbook for health care organisations, but DeGrippo emphasised the need of creating resilience to survive an assault when it occurs.