Group of cybersecurity experts, incident responders and industry experts have teamed up to help organizations combat hacking and phishing attacks related to COVID-19.
Named the COVID-19 CTI League, the restricted -invite members will prioritize efforts to assess and neutralize all threats, but prioritizes medical services and vital infrastructure on the front line.
The main focus will be on helping hospitals and health care facilities to avoid ransomware and other threats from attackers who try to exploit the general havoc caused by the COVID-19 health crisis.
But the goal of the COVID-19 CTI League is broader than just supporting health-care agencies. According to a brief summary of the group’s website, it will also seek to neutralize other cyber threats to exploit the current pandemic.
Why are Hospitals the Perfect Ransomware Target?
For more than a decade, Ransomware has become an Internet threat but it has only recently made headlines for mainstream media. And hospitals around the world have seen a significant rise in cyber attacks over the past year.
The malware works by locking your device to keep you from accessing the data before you pay a ransom, which is normally demanded in Bitcoin. Hospitals are the perfect mark for this kind of blackmail because they provide medical care and rely on up– patient record records. Without easy access to prescription records, procedure protocols and other information, medical treatment can be postponed or halted, making hospitals more likely to pay a ransom rather than tolerate delays that could lead to death and litigation.
To conclude, the best protection against ransomware attacks requires a proactive approach: ensuring that applications and infrastructure are up-to-date, conducting secure cloud backups on a regular basis, and collaborating with a managed security service provider to track corporate networks, conduct risk assessments and make recommendations unique to the data environment of your organization.
