By By Dan Hounsell

Cyber attacks are traumatizing healthcare organizations. An email attack potentially exposed about 45,000 patients' information. A ransomware attack cost a healthcare system about $67 million. But the growing wave of attacks also is taking a human toll.

Cyberattacks targeting healthcare are putting patients at unnecessary risk, and more must be done to hold the cyber criminals involved to account, warns the CyberPeace Institute. Faced with a ransomware attack, a hospital might pay the cyber criminals the ransom they demand in return for the decryption key because it's perceived to be the quickest and easiest way to restore the network and, therefore, the most direct route to restoring patient care.

The CyberPeace Institute paper argues that cyberattacks on healthcare are attacks on society as a whole, potentially creating threats to human life, particularly when campaigns are targeting hospitals and healthcare organisations during a pandemic.