By Jeff Wardon, Jr., Assistant Editor

Netwrix released a report revealing that 84 percent of organizations in the healthcare sector detected a cyberattack in the past year.  

Phishing was the top on-premises threat, while account compromise (74 percent) led to cloud-based attacks, according to Netwrix’s report.  

Cloudflare recommends these tips to identify a potential phishing attempt: 

• The sender’s email address isn’t associated with a legitimate domain name, meaning the domain should match up to the name organization the email says it comes from. 
• A generic greeting is used in place of a name, including terms such as “customer,” “account holder,” or “dear.” 
• There is a time limit or unrealistic sense of urgency. 
• The body message is full of syntactical errors. 

Sixty-nine percent of healthcare organizations reported financial damage from attacks, higher than the 60 percent seen across other industries. According to the report, 28 percent of healthcare facilities were out a maximum of $10,000 due to the attacks.  

Related: Protecting Patient Data: Strategies and Tactics

In addition, healthcare organizations faced severe fallout, with 21 percent seeing leadership changes and 19 percent facing lawsuits. As previously reported by Healthcare Facilities Today, PIH Health is being sued for not keeping patients’ confidential information safe from hackers after a December 2024 ransomware attack.  

Even patient care can be disrupted in the wake of a cyberattack, making access to care, quality of care and its continuity take a hit. Healthcare Facilities Today previously reported on a ransomware attack UMC Health System experienced which caused an IT outage, resulting in systems being taken offline and patients being diverted for care. Similarly, HealthAlliance Hospital and Margaretville Hospital had to temporarily divert ambulances to other nearby facilities due to a cyberattack they experienced in October 2023. 

The fallout of cyberattacks is costly for healthcare facilities, making cybersecurity pertinent to keeping operations running smoothly and protecting sensitive data.   

Jeff Wardon, Jr., is the assistant editor for the facilities market.