Cyberattacks Don't Care About Size

Posted By American Med Spa Association, Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Cyberattacks on large hospital systems made headlines recently but a new cyberattack on a small Atlanta clinic demonstrates that health care providers are not safe no matter the size of the practice.

Peachtree Neurological Clinic in Atlanta, Georgia, informed its patients in a letter that it was the victim of a ransomware attack where its system was encrypted and a ransom demanded to unlock.  Rather than pay the ransom, the clinic restored its information and system from backup records.  Yet in continuing its investigation, the clinic discovered their system had been previously hacked and accessed for over a year (February 2016-May 2017).  It was not immediately known whether any information had been viewed or acquired.

Health care providers are potential targets because of the valuable information that they possess.  Healthcare Analytics News recently reported on issues raised by attendees at the Black Hat USA 2017 event, the world’s leading information security event, including vulnerabilities for healthcare systems and hacking of medical devices.  
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