Try Aura free for 14 days to see if it's right for you. Steve is responsible for editorial policy regarding the topics covered on HIPAA Journal. The nonprofit is far from alone and far from the biggest victim. Healthcare phishing scam education and training is one way, however, this should never be a one-and-done session. Eight of the 10 largest attacks to have ever hit healthcare companies up to that point happened in 2014 too, which speaks to the fact that this industry is definitely getting a lot of attention from cyber-criminals. Sure enough, after the CEOs email, the accountant was phoned and emailed by the alleged attorney. While phishing emails come in all shapes and sizes, they typically follow a pattern. Here are three reasons phishers go after the healthcare industry. As with the attack on Anthem Inc, the initial access to its network occurred in 2014 and was again the result of phishing emails sent to employees that installed malware, with the attack and malware infection going undetected for around 9 months. In the HIMSS survey, 82% of respondents said they conduct phishing tests, of which 58% were able to report their click rate. But, by immediately taking action, you may fail to recognize that the action requested by the partner is weird or that your banks communication looks slightly different than normal. The problem? Should you put in Microsoft Office credentials, Gmail credentials, or something similar, the attacker would have captured that information for later use. IC3 received 323,972 phishing complaints in . And, frankly, its probably easier. In this way, phishing in the healthcare industry isnt any harder than phishing in the pet care industry. So, we know the goal of a phish and we know the emotional responses they try to trigger to succeed in their phishing attempt. Embedded into your email with a button saying things like Review & Verify your account. We mentioned that these particular businesses often get hit because they have two very tempting kinds of treasure in large amounts: money and data. Phishingthats just something the big guys need to worry about, right?. To combat phishing, a combination of measures are required, which should include an email security solution to prevent phishing emails from reaching inboxes, a web filter for blocking access to phishing and other malicious websites, antivirus software on all endpoints, an intrusion detection system for identifying suspicious activity, and comprehensive security awareness training for the workforce to raise awareness of the threat of phishing, along with phishing simulations for testing the resilience of the workforce to phishing attacks. It asks the consumer to provide personal identifying information. Receive weekly HIPAA news directly via email, HIPAA News
Several of the compromised victims were then contacted via email and directed to the scam site. The FBI reported that Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks cost organizations $1.77 billion in losses in 2019, and they received a total of 23,775 complaints related to BEC threats. With every incident, reputation, business uptime, and finances are all at risk of being impacted. The other common form of phishing were seeing in the healthcare industry begins with the scammer starting a website. True to the anatomy of a phishing attack, this website is meant to look authoritative so no one thinks twice about trusting it. Magnolia Health Corporation was an example of this back in February, when an employee received an email that was, again, supposedly from the CEO. For example, health inequity: makes it more difficult to contain and treat infectious diseases. This is when you factor in everything from pharmaceuticals to digital products and more. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) found that phishing was the most frequently reported cybercrime of 2021. Phishing attacks pose a major threat to the healthcare industry as it does to organizations in almost every sector. It operates in the background so users dont even think about it until they get phished. We have listed some of the most common phishing attack examples below. There are a variety of methods for doing so, but generally, if an attacker can do a good job making you think a request is from your coworker, youll probably try to help in some capacity. Its working, and until it stops working, its not going anywhere. Copyright 2007-2022 The HIPAA Guide Site Map Privacy Policy About The HIPAA Guide, The HIPAA Guide - Celebrating 15 Years Online. The money had been taken; the bank account in China had been zeroed out; the criminals were gone without a trace. They understood how to talk like a high-powered attorney who knew what he was doing and how to act like a CEO who had a serious business matter that had to be handled. In addition to the considerable cost of breach remediation, Anthem also settled a class action lawsuit related to the breach for $115 million. Malware was installed on the network that gave a nation state threat actor access to the protected health information of 78.8 million health plan members. 14 Real-World Examples of Business Email Compromise (Updated 2022) By Laura Brooks 27 January 2022 . Especially when a favor has already been done for you, if youve already committed to something, or if you simply like the person asking, the want to follow through on that request goes way up. C-level executives, board members, presidents, and founders are all targets in whaling attacks. Infosec, part of Cengage Group 2022 Infosec Institute, Inc. Social media needs to be considered the same as all other attack vectors when combatting social engineering attempts. Across all 23 industry sectors that were represented in the study, 21% of reported crimeware emails contained malicious attachments. The attacker uses redirects or popups on the user's desktop that display the phishing website in a masked link. These include credential stealerswhereby usernames, passwords and other tokens are stolen by cybercriminals and wipers in which entire disk drives may be erased and the data may be unrecoverable. In healthcare, this impact is magnified because an incident has the potential to physically harm people. Darren leads growth marketing strategy at Infosec, where he focuses on implementing scalable digital strategies that generate sales-ready leads, shorten the time-to-purchase journey and reduce churn. Healthcare plans for when MediCare Comes Up Short for You Can you find affordable healthcare in 2013? $175 MILLION healthcare records have been stolen or exposed in recent years. Posting photos of desk setups, employees with badges on, office layouts, and more are all additional ways attackers can gather information. Eventually, this attack rewarded the culprits with the records of over 1,300 patients. A phish is essentially the practical application of social engineering. This year, healthcare phishing attacks also successfully penetrated the Oregon Department of Human Services (645,000 patients) and UConn Health (326,629 patients), according to Health IT Security. HIPAA Journal's goal is to assist HIPAA-covered entities achieve and maintain compliance with state and federal regulations governing the use, storage and disclosure of PHI and PII. And the culprits were most often bad actors in these scenarios. Now, imagine how thats amplified when the affected users are ones with a great deal of power, control, and access within the organization. This tends to have a more personal impact, but it can pose danger for the organization as well. 1. Cybercriminals like to create a sense of urgency and panic to get you to give up user credentials. While fake invoices are often used in phishing attacks on healthcare organizations, they are only the third most common type of phishing email (16.5%). These records are worth a lot because they have multiple uses: billing fraud, medical identity theft, and buying drugs for resale. Two of the biggest volleys hit Science Applications International Corporation and IBM. Ambry Genetics - Hacked via email which gave in 232,772 patient files in January 2020. Phishing simulations are another method, which boils down to phishing your own employees. That cyberattack started with spear phishing emails. To make a long story short, the companys accountant received an email from someone pretending to be their CEO. Its phishing prevention techniques include building a trust graph with this information and assessing the patterns and frequency of sender and recipient communication to identify anything outside the norm, such as changes to an email address or URL. In the retail industry, companies often do not require their customers to log-in to a portal, leading cyber-criminals to craft advanced phishing attacks. HIMSS Healthcare Cybersecurity Survey The majority of 2020 healthcare breaches occurred as a result of cybersecurity incidents. The most common healthcare phishing emails were fake payment notifications (58%). Not to mention, company and employee use of social could implicate the organization as well. Below are some of the most common examples of spear phishing threats you're likely to encounter: 1. You dont have to worry that an advanced form of digital security is on patrol to catch your digital footprints. If information is power, then information about peoples health histories, their personal identification information, and, of course, their financial data, is about as powerful as it gets. The largest and costliest healthcare data breach in history occurred at Anthem Inc. in February 2014 but was not detected for a year. Even if the link claims to point to a known, reputable site, it's always safer to manually type the URL into your browser's address bar. To limit the harm caused should an attack result in credential theft, multi-factor authentication should be used on all email accounts. Author: Steve Alder is the editor-in-chief of HIPAA Journal. In addition to ransomware, there are many other types of malware that pose a threat to healthcare organizations. We may have told our doctors things almost no one else knows. An employee releasing sensitive information or credentials could pose problems down the line for all the reasons weve already discussed here. Phishing appeared in 59% of significant security incidents across all organizations, and 69% of incidents at hospitals according to the same survey. However, experts are starting to think another reason may simply be that employees at these companies already have their hands full. You can protect yourself and your family by staying informed. To ensure that we really drive this point home, lets take a look at some stunning examples that show how dangerous phishing has become. The attachment contains a document with safety and coronavirus prevention instructions, also instructions from the U.S. Department of Health on how to get the vaccine for FREE. Cybersecurity is Now a Patient Safety Issue, Suggests Sen. Warner In Congressional Report, Advocate Aurora Health and WakeMed Sued Over Meta Pixel Privacy Breaches, Georgia Home Health Company Settles Phishing Investigation and Pays $425,000 Penalty, CorrectCare Integrated Health Data Breach Affects Thousands of Inmates, Anesthesia, Eye Care, and Telehealth Providers Announce Third-Party Data Breaches. Typically, these attempts target someone with authority. Top 3 Healthcare Related Templates When sending out a healthcare-related phishing simulation, we recommend starting with Covid-19, Central Medical, or . Instead of "baiting" their victims, the attackers are . In a 2019 survey conducted at HIMSS (a large medical conference), nearly 80% of respondents had experienced a significant security incident the year prior. "The intruder then gained access to a limited number of Elara employee email accounts and sent additional phishing emails from two accounts. Protection and visibility across your org's G Suite Gmail and GDrive. An attacker gaining admin access is a scary proposition as well. Across all respondents, 40% said . Phishing involves the exploitation of data for malicious purposes via targeted communications (email/messaging). Osterman cited the example of the 2016 ransomware attack on Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center that encrypted its electronic health record (EHR) systems so that the hospital had to revert to. A Ponemon study that was done last year reported that victims of this kind of identity theft spend, on average, $13,500 to reimburse their healthcare provider after fraudulent claims have been made, restore their credit and correct inaccuracies that are now in their healthcare records. Thats why we must take phishing especially seriously in the healthcare industry. While not the most serious of these examples of phishing attacks in terms of the number of individuals affected, the phishing attack on University of Washington Medicine still proved costly. Phishing is a huge threat and growing more widespread every year. In both instances, the goal is typically to harvest credentials. They usually involve detailed intel gathering on the target subject and are not attempted until things like job title, email address, and specific information about their role are obtained. . They affected 4.9 million and 1.9 million individuals, respectively. Around 50% of healthcare data breach victims suffered medical identity theft, with an average out-of-the-pocket cost of $2,500 for patients. Its human nature to be both trusting and helpful. In case you think that last problem would be the least of your worriesperhaps just a minor inconvenienceprepare for a very rude awakening: those inaccuracies could actually kill you. If employees access personal social media on their work devices, any attack success could directly impact your internal assets. In fact, the industry as a whole spends less than 3% of its profits on IT. Suspicious Activity. . Hackers try to use a variety of methods to access private information. So its not hard to understand why phishing specialists would want to cast all their lines in that particular body of water. Social engineers (the malicious ones, anyway) bank on that. Phishing emails often contain links to malware sites. Technical Support Frauds - With technology advancements and the increasing number of activities relocated online, service providers were faced with the necessity to step up their security game. The first is getting you to click a link you shouldnt have. By now, I actually assume everyone understands what an email phishing attempt is. 4. A company called Ameriforge Group Inc. was on the receiving end of a CEO phishing attack back in 2014 that cost them close to half-a-million dollars. They didnt stop there, though. Things like supply chain, payroll information, and internet-connected medical devices would all be more likely to be accessed and abused. In all other industry sectors, fake invoices were the most common phishing threat. Therefore, its impossible to know just how often this happens. The less time you have to act on something, the less thinking you can do about it. Visibility into threats across Slack and Cloud Collaboration channels. Speed leads to carelessness. #4 Pharming. An identical attack on St. Josephs Healthcare System that happened just three days later is why so many experts are calling phishing attacks an epidemic. Many of the examples of phishing attacks included below could have been prevented had low-cost solutions been implemented. Don't trust the URL you see! Stop targeted attacks on email, Slack, Zoom, and Box with Clearedins active defense technology. It began with an attack on a server they were using. Steps were apparently taken to improve email security, yet a year later between March and April 2018, the healthcare organization was targeted again and this time the data of over 1.4 million patients was compromised. HIPAA Advice, Email Never Shared In 2015, the healthcare industry was the second biggest victim of data breaches in the country. In 2017, UnityPoint Health suffered a phishing attack in which attackers gained access to email accounts containing the protected health information of 16,429 individuals. Theyre routinely the number one most common attack vector in the social engineering realm. Medical phishing attacks that result in ransomware being unleashed, for example, can bring the entire organization to its knees because lives are at risk. Spear phishing is another type of phishing attack, but they target a narrower audiencehence the spear. Therefore, we have to continue to find ways as organizations to combat phishing attempts. 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