The reports of a ransomware attack striking the University Hospital New Jersey (UHNJ) relate to an indecent that occurred during August 2020as reported by Bleeping Computer. This attack, only just reported, represents an example of a cyber-threat directed at the healthcare sector. The incident signifies the vulnerability faced by the types of organizations that hold considerable amounts of personably indefinable information.
In the case of the hospital, it was reported the institution has suffered a massive 48,000 document data breach after a ransomware operation leaked their stolen data. Furthermore it was found that the SunCrypt ransomware operation has leaked the data have leaked a 1.7 GB archive containing over 48,000 documents.
Looking at the incident for Digital Journal, Dr Vinay Sridhara, CTO at Balbix looks at the very real threat posed by this type of attack mechanism: “Ransomware attacks on hospitals are a plague the industry. This attack shows the need for healthcare organizations to achieve full visibility of their network infrastructure.” Such transparency is needed to pinpoint and to halt these types of ransomware. These attacks pose a particular risk to patients and with delivering healthcare services.
With the specific case, Sridhara says an employee of the hospital had their device infected with the TrickBot trojan. The analyst explains: “When a computer is infected with TrickBot, it can lead to a full compromise of the network with ransomware.”
In terms of the appropriate actions to consider, Sridhara makes several recommendations: “To defend against these types of attacks, organizations use proactive technologies to identify and mitigate the risk of ransomware . Solutions that leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning can quantify and prioritize breach risks and ensure maximum breach risk reduction.”
