From the June 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

Hackers only need a single employee to click on the malicious link or attachment in order to compromise the network. The larger the organization, the greater the risk, because more information is available on the Internet about the organization and its employees that can be used in a ransomware campaign. There are also more employees who could potentially fall victim. The threat of ransomware should not be taken lightly. These attacks can have devastating consequences, including:

• Financial and operational impact on employee productivity.
• Significant costs associated with ransomware containment and data breach assessment.

• Financial loss due to “ransom” payment to attackers.
• Cost of potential legal action and reparations to victims.
• Fines, liabilities and regulatory actions. It’s better to prevent a malware or ransomware infection than to potentially incur millions of dollars in remediation costs. Information technology and information security professionals, vendors and consultants with health care industry experience can help you build a fortified defense, which may include:
• Providing employees with specialized information and security awareness training, including phishing and spear phishing attack simulations.
• Having reliable backups for data and systems.
• Patching all devices as often as possible, including performing vulnerability scans that can help to detect potential weaknesses.
• Deploying technical controls, which include firewalls, content filtering for Web and email, antivirus on email servers, antivirus and anti-malware on employee inboxes and desktop antivirus software.
• Segmenting and subnetting the network and restricting access in the event that there is a successful attack.
• Assigning user account access based on a least-privilege model.

About the authors: Jorge Rey, CISA, CISM, CGEIT, is an information security and compliance director, and Roberto Valdez, CPA, is a risk advisory services professional at Kaufman Rossin, one of the top 50 CPA and advisory firms in the U.S.

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