Healthcare Security Threats To be Taken in Consideration
As security threats emerge, organizations must account for different attack techniques to protect themselves against impending threats. Health institutions acknowledge cybersecurity to be a serious safety concern that is core to healthcare’s overall mission. These cause significant financial damage to the industry while eroding patients’ confidence in their healthcare providers’ abilities to protect their most sensitive data.
Check out some of the common health care spam threats and phishing techniques.
• Malware
Hackers normally include malicious codes in email, in the form of PDF or Word Documents, or as links redirecting to malicious sites. Those links are designed to run in a user’s browser without their awareness. When a user clicks on the embedded link, the malware completely takes over and spreads throughout the entire networks in mere seconds.
• Phishing
Phishing emails are the most widely used mode of cyber-attack for healthcare hackers. Phishing spammers send unrequested emails to users falsely claiming to be a well established business. Sometimes these emails will be sent in bulk and it will contain a link that takes the users to malicious sites where they have to update their sensitive data such as credit card details, bank account information and social security information.
Technology to Prevent Healthcare Frauds
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning systems can sort large amounts of user data in a fraction of the time and thus preventing normal human errors. Here’s how hospitals can fight against phishing attacks using AI and Machine Learning.
• Detecting anomalies in healthcare data
Artificial Intelligence is programmed to recognize suspicious behaviors and oddity — things that don’t look right. Machine learning acquires non-human programmed perception by analyzing data and exploring patterns trying to find specific criteria that could indicate the presence of healthcare fraud. AI system can tell the difference between genuine ways of entering data and an authentic fraud behavior. So AI and ML is slowly becoming a highly valuable tool for various industries.
AI will be a valuable tool for detecting and preventing healthcare phishing spam, but we should not completely rely on them. It can never replace the human analysts who understand the difference between the general human errors and will prevent the system from flagging them as spam that might just be a typo entered by a doctor or staffs.
The growth of email fraud is the most concerning cybersecurity challenge facing the healthcare industry. This involves email compromise and a series of identity deception menaces. Email hoax preys on fear, faith, and the urge to be helpful, creating possibilities for threat actors to steal money and essential information, or launch phishing or malware attacks. These events are highly targeted and use identity deception tactics such as spoofing and fake email chains to pose as trusted colleagues or business partners over email.
As in the CDC example, cybercriminals use a variety of techniques, often in tandem, to launch email fraud attacks. Display-name spoofing, domain spoofing, lookalike domains are the most common techniques for a cyber attack. Email fraud tricks keep on changing. This is the sole reason why healthcare institutions need a multilayered defense. In order to protect patients, staff, and business partners from such email fraud, email authentication, machine learning and policy enforcement, domain monitoring should be kept in mind. Protecting VAP and security awareness training and process accountability should also be given equal importance to ignore email frauds.
A large amount has been invested in security but yet email frauds tend to keep growing. Cybercriminals continue growing more advanced day by day. These attacks are evading traditional security tools, leaving people as the last line of defense. Taking a multilayer approach to cybersecurity, and protecting the most attacked employees, will significantly lessen risk and allow the institution to concentrate on patient care.
Source: Emerging Healthcare Security System to Thwart Fraudulent Email Attacks
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