“Pursue ‘1-10-60 rule' to effectively combat sophisticated cyber-threats”

As hospitals and medical organisations around the world are working endlessly to preserve the wellbeing of individuals stricken with COVID-19, cybercrime hackers are silently targeting hospitals to exploiting stretched healthcare resources and to access critical care systems through cyber-attacks.

- Hithaishi C Bhaskar 

Interpol, the international police organisation has issued an alert following a rise in ransomware attacks on hospitals and other healthcare institutions amidst the pandemic. Most alarmingly, in late-March, a medical facility on standby to help test any coronavirus vaccine has been hit by a ransomware group. Similarly, hackers have been posing as government entities in India, Japan, Singapore and even the World Health Organisation (WHO) to send bogus health advisories on coronavirus through email, infecting people with malware. Malaysia reported spike in cybersecurity cases by a whopping 82.5 percent during the COVID-19 Movement Control Order so far. In a recent conversation with BioSpectrum Asia, Sherif El-Nabawi, Vice President (Engineering, APJ), CrowdStrike, Singapore gave insight on healthcare cyber-attacks and keys to mitigate the risk. Edited excerpts;

How do cyber-attackers exploit healthcare resources during the COVID-19 pandemic and what are the consequences of cyber-attacks on Asia-Pacific healthcare sector?

The world has witnessed the COVID-19 pandemic place unprecedented strain on many countries’ healthcare systems. It has been the catalyst for a paradigm shiftin the way organisations operate, with many having to move quickly to stand-up a remote workforce or enable remote doctor consultations due to social distancing guidelines. This has created a perfect storm for adversaries to launch targeted attacks against an overstretched healthcare industry.

Threat activity has ranged from financially motivated threat actors targeting hospitals to deny them access to critical systems and disrupting their ability to provide patient care, to the compromise of sensitive patient information.