Healthcare Security: Ransomware Plays a Prominent Role in COVID-19 Era Breaches

Ransomware is the root cause in a majority of the healthcare breaches analyzed.

The Tenable SRT monitors threat and vulnerability intelligence feeds to help drive and prioritize plugin coverage for Tenable products as well as keeping customers informed of the risks associated with vulnerabilities. For additional context, the team also monitors and tracks publicly disclosed breaches to understand how and when vulnerabilities are a factor. The Tenable 2020 Threat Landscape Retrospective (TLR) revealed a total of 22 billion records exposed as a result of 730 publicly disclosed breaches between January 2020 and October 2020, with healthcare being by far the most affected industry sector.

An analysis of publicly disclosed breach data by the Tenable Security Response Team (SRT) reveals 237 breaches in the healthcare sector in the calendar year 2020. And the activity looks set to continue unabated in 2021, with 56 breaches already disclosed as of February 28. One finding is clear: ransomware attacks are not going away anytime soon.

This comes as no surprise given the critical role healthcare infrastructure has had as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To read the full report about my research, please visit our blog.