The U.S. Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3), under the auspices of it’s HHS Cybersecurity Program, has revealed some startling facts about cybersecurity attacks and threats in the nation’s healthcare sector. The historic facts go back to 1989, when there was no concept of cyber threat intelligence software, and the payout was small – less than two-hundred dollars! – to recover from the attacks. Today, as healthcare providers, laboratories, and critical healthcare infrastructure face unprecedented numbers of cyber-attacks, the role of intelligent attacker monitoring and attack detection and prevention is more significant than ever.
The Evolving Cyberthreat Landscape
From relatively “simple” Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, to Supply chain attacks, remote desk top protocol (RDP) exploitation, phishing, compromised open-source software, to healthcare IoT, and other medical device vulnerabilities, cyber criminals are evolving faster than the cyber threat intelligence tools meant to protect healthcare IT infrastructure and systems.
The domain of cybercriminals continues to evolve. From global multinational giant healthcare plan administrators, to smaller, localized, providers, everyone is fair game. As a result of the malicious Ruyk strain, United Healthcare Services (UHS) lost $67-million in a ransomware attack in 2020. More recently, Tenet Healthcare lost $100-million in a cyberattack, while Scripps Health reported $112.7-million in cybersecurity-related losses in its June 30th, 2021 quarterly financial statements.
The first known ransomware incident in 1989 cost individual victims $189 to regain full access to their ransomed data. Today, the evolving cyber threat landscape makes recovery more costly – into the hundreds-of-millions of dollars. Whether an organization can afford to invest in state-of-the-art threat intelligence software isn’t an option any longer – it’s a necessity.
Meeting Cyberthreats Head-on
The fast-evolving cyberthreat landscape has prompted an equally potent response from data-centric security operations platform (SOP) providers. One way, to meet the burgeoning cyberthreat to the healthcare industry head-on, is to respond through professionally operated security operations centers (SOC), and back the SOC’s with a comprehensive set of cyber threat intelligence tools, and a platform of integrated forensic and intelligence-driven incident response services.
The QuoLab SOP (“the Platform”) delivers such a platform, by integrating people expertise, with proven technology, and highly-responsive processes. With healthcare cybersecurity teams already under pressure from relentless adversaries, they have little time to spare on cyberthreat intelligence acquisition, monitoring bad actors, and assessing potential risk behavior.
The Platform now automates those functions, leaving healthcare cyber professionals more time to focus on attack recovery and threat mitigation. And beyond automation, this set of integrated tools facilitates the secure collaboration and data-sharing efforts, between internal and external teams, that hereto has remained the largest stumbling-block to a prompt and effective cyberthreat response. Instead of individual teams acting within silos, a host of partners now cooperate to mount a unified, robust threat response.
QuoLab’s threat intelligence software tools help cyberthreat pros to analyze, monitor, investigate, and respond to threats, by creating an integrated threat assessment ecosystem. By enabling collaborative processes, using deep analytics, insightful reporting, visually-effective interfaces, and highly responsive and intuitive workflows, the Platform empowers healthcare IT teams to remain ahead of the malicious actors.