A warning has been issued to the healthcare and public health (HPH) sector that North Korean state-sponsored hackers are conducting targeted ransomware attacks using Maui ransomware. The warning was issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the...

Ransomware attacks were often headline news in 2021, especially when healthcare providers were attacked. In many cases, the attacks forced hospitals to postpone appointments and procedures out of safety concerns, causing delays to the provision of treatment. According...

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) breach portal shows 2021 was a record year for healthcare industry data breaches, with 714 breaches of protected health information reported to OCR for 2021. The breach reports do not show the...

On May 14, 2021, the Conti ransomware gang conducted a ransomware attack on Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) that resulted in the shutdown of IT systems supporting healthcare across the entire country. The attack resulted in the encryption of around 80% of all...

The American Hospital Association (AHA) has urged healthcare organizations to review a recent Microsoft blog post that warns of a new malware variant that has been used by an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor to attack critical infrastructure organizations in...

2021 was another record-breaking year for healthcare data breaches. As of December 31, 2021, 686 healthcare data breaches had been reported to the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights that affected 44,993,618 individuals.  That number is sure to grow over the coming days as...

The DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a security alert warning healthcare providers about a high-severity vulnerability that affects certain Hillrom Welch Allyn cardio products. The vulnerability is an authentication bypass issue,...

The healthcare and public health sector has been warned to take steps to reduce the risk of cyberattacks exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities. A zero-day vulnerability is a software flaw that has only just been brought to the attention of a software developer, often as...

Several vulnerabilities have recently been identified in medical devices such as insulin pumps, infusion pumps, and pacemakers which could be exploited in malicious attacks that could potentially kill patients and concern is growing about the threat of attacks....

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an initiative launched by the National Cyber Security Alliance and the United States Department of Homeland Security in 2004 which is now in its 18th year. Throughout October, cybersecurity advice will be issued, and...

The Department of Health and Human Services’ cybersecurity department, the Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3), has issued a warning to organizations in the health and public health sector alerting them to an elevated risk of BlackMatter ransomware...

In most organizations, the recommended practices for password creation involve setting a unique password for all accounts, making sure the password is as random as possible - combining upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and special characters - is at least 8...

The average cost of a data breach has increased 10% year-over-year, according to the IBM Security 2021 Cost of a Data Breach Report. Data breach costs have reached record levels and are higher than at any other point in the past 17 years that IBM Security has been...

Four new zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server versions 2013, 2016, and 2019 have been discovered by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). These versions of Microsoft Exchange Server must be patched as soon as possible to avoid the possibility of...

With the passing, in November 2020, of the California Privacy Rights Act, came a range of new obligations for businesses operating in the State. They must now move swift to make sure that every member of staff is conscious of their obligations in order to avoid large...

In the third quarter of 2020, an alert was released for the healthcare and public health sector in the aftermath of a spike in ransomware activity being identified. The joint CISA, FBI, and HHS cybersecurity advisory group informed the healthcare sector that it was...

In France the data protection regulator, Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL), has penalised French retail giant Carrefour more than €3m ($3.7m) in relation to a number of breaches of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation....

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has issued a cybersecurity advisory warning Russian state-sponsored hacking groups are targeting a vulnerability in VMWare virtual workspaces used to support remote working. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2020-4006, is present in...

In Canada Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Navdeep Bains has introduced the proposed Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2020 which aims to bring the framework up to date for the security of private data in the corporate sector. The proposed Digital...

Microsoft have made a new patch available to address a critical remove code execution flaw in the Microsoft Windows Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/IP stack. The flaw is related to how the TCP/IP stack manages Internet Control Message Protocol version 6 (ICMPv6)...