How Do They Hack Hospitals? –Cyberthreats In The Digital Health Era

We strongly believe that only digital health can bring healthcare into the 21st century and make patients the point-of-care.

While we were battling the COVID-19 virus in 2020, other infections were also happening, albeit in other, digital systems. We are, of course, talking about cyberattacks. These involve digital viruses infecting IT systems and disrupting potentially life-saving processes until after paying a ransom. No honour among thieves, goes the saying; not even during a pandemic.

Indeed, as global technology company Acronis noted, there was a rise in ransomware cases at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. A ransomware attack in mid-2020 on Blackbaud, cloud computing vendor, compromised sensitive data of over 10 million patients, including health details and social security numbers. In late 2020, several healthcare institutions in the U.S. faced a wave of such attacks; a wave which Wired termed as “unprecedented.”