2024 SonicWall Threat Brief: Healthcare’s Escalating Cybersecurity Challenge
SonicWall’s 2024 Healthcare Threat Brief reveals at least 14 million U.S. patients affected by malware breaches, as outdated systems leave healthcare providers vulnerable to evolving ransomware threats - underscoring the need for MSPs/MSSPs.
In 2024, we’ve reached a critical juncture with regard to cybersecurity in healthcare. The numbers revealed in our 2024 Healthcare Threat Brief are alarming. According to our report, a staggering minimum of 14 million healthcare patients in the United States have fallen victim to malware breaches so far this year – despite SonicWall sensors thwarting more than 26,000 cyberattacks in this sector. Healthcare is a growing target for threat actors, and 91% of attacks on healthcare systems involve ransomware.
The Vulnerability of Healthcare Systems
The reality is many healthcare organizations are reliant on severely outdated systems and working with bare minimum cybersecurity resources. Of particular note, SonicWall determined that a whopping 60% of healthcare breaches involved leveraging vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange. Threat actors flock to these minimally secure systems like moths to a flame, especially in a day and age where they have every new tool and trick available to them. It’s clear to see why healthcare organizations are being targeted.
Our Executive Director of Threat Research, Doug McKee, placed an emphasis on the importance of awareness, saying “Staying up-to-date and informed about emerging threats is a crucial part of protecting patient data and making sure medical operations continue without interruptions. Even short disruptions in access to vital data and systems could spell life-threatening consequences, which makes healthcare organizations more susceptible to paying threat actors to get back access to their data quickly.”
The Role of MSPs and MSSPs in Healthcare
Almost every industry has been steadily moving data over to the cloud, and healthcare is no different. The digitization of health records and increasing demand for telehealth services has also resulted in a greatly expanded attack surface. This has made it an even greater challenge for healthcare providers to adequately secure their networks. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) play an important role in enhancing the healthcare sector’s resilience to cyberattacks. By offering real-time system monitoring, robust security measures and ensuring regulatory compliance, MSPs/MSSPs can relieve the burden of cybersecurity from healthcare providers and free them to maintain focus on delivering quality care, trusting that their sensitive patient data is in good hands.
Safeguarding the Future
Our 2024 Healthcare Threat Brief puts a spotlight on the urgent need for healthcare providers to do whatever is necessary to strengthen their cybersecurity infrastructure. Patients should be able to trust that their sensitive personal information is safe when they entrust it to medical professionals. Nobody wants to get that dreadful letter in the mail telling them their payment information, health records, address, phone numbers and much more have been lost, and being offered free “credit monitoring services” as compensation – trust me, I speak from experience. My data was lost in the Change Healthcare breach earlier this year. As ransomware becomes even more sophisticated and dangerous, partnering with MSPs and MSSPs could be the most cost-effective and time-saving way for healthcare providers to combat this growing threat.
The numbers above were collected and analyzed by our own SonicWall Capture Labs threat research team. For more details, be sure to read the full SonicWall 2024 Threat Brief today.
