Increased threat of ransomware for American hospitals, their partners and their patients
Hospitals are one of the favorite targets of ransomware hackers because hospitals simply can’t afford to have their IT down as it can cause severe harm or even death to patients. As a result when a hospital has its systems blocked by hackers it might be more willing to pay a ransom than any other type of organization in order to get their systems working again.
Recently, a debt collection company working with 657 healthcare providers announced that it had been the victim of a cyber attack. Hackers were able to obtain patients information including their name, address, social security number and medical information. It is unclear so far how many patients have been affected but this might have been of of the largest healthcare data breach of 2022.