Banks are not the primary targets of hackers anymore. Hackers have slowly turned their sights to the healthcare industry. You may ask why they would do that. Once a hacker breaks into a bank, and steals the funds, the job is finished. The hackers have drunk that well dry. Hospitals provide patient, medical, and in some cases, pharmaceutical data that can keep a hacker nourished for years to come. Managed cloud services, like those provided by TOSS C3, can protect your hospital, clinic, or lab from the potential threat of hackers.

How Bad is a Data Breach?
A data breach can come at any time. The most common is malware sent via emails. An employee opens a document or link, which triggers the virus to upload to the network. Ransomeware has become more prevalent, in which hackers lock your computers, or entire network, holding it hostage until an amount of money is sent to their online account. As TOSS C3 reported earlier this year, “Currently, 46 out of the 50 states have enacted laws that require companies to notify those affected by a security breach, meaning your company takes a PR hit on top of the costs of restoring the data, restoring the network to productive status, and the legal fees incurred during the breach.” For more information about protection from data breaches, buy the book:

Hackers are Going After Hospitals? Sounds like a movie.
Yes, it does. Hackers are developing long term goals. Here is some of the proof. Computer World reports “Cyberattacks will cost hospitals more than $305 billion over the next five years and one in 13 patients will have their data compromised by a hack,” and “since late 2009, the medical information of more than 155 million Americans has been exposed without their permission through about 1,500 breaches.” On top of that, iMedicalApps reports, “Over 1,000 healthcare organizations have been plagued by data breaches in recent years, causing massive exposure of protected health data at Anthem, Premera Blue Cross and many other major organizations.” The reality is here, and hospitals, clinics, and labs are at risk. Managed cloud services are a requirement in healthcare agency safety. The cloud can help to keep information out of the hands of hackers, and in the hands of those patients trust. See our white paper: Managed IT Services For Small Businesses

What Can be Done?
The healthcare industry is buried in regulatory compliance laws, and they are not focusing on security. Many larger hospitals are still using legacy systems. These legacy systems are honey to the hackers, and they cannot wait to get their paws into the middle. Firewalls and permissions are no longer the way to protect your data. Encryption and detection are the new models sought by the healthcare industry. The hackers have to be stopped from entering your network, and if they are not, then the data should be useless.

At this point there is no doubt hackers will be penetrating healthcare systems for the next couple of years. The only ones that can be protected are those that have devised a solid cloud infrastructure that can stop the hackers from entering the network. When a malware has taken control of a network, the network needs to be shut and restored immediately. The only way to do this is through managed cloud services.