Change Healthcare’s Ransomware Attack

Let's repeat the painful truth once more: Lack of cybersecurity countermeasures can cost you much more than you expected.

The cyber attacks (especially ransomware attacks) on the health sector have been increasing in recent years. Health sector players have to take this fact into consideration in order to avoid being the next cyber victim of the cyber crime market.

UnitedHealth states that the total costs of the February cyber attack for the first quarter of 2024 stands at $872 million. The total cost reached "$1 billion" with the remediation costs, including a $22 million payment to the ALPHV/BlackCat-affiliated ransomware group. (If you hire 20 cyber security experts each for $250,000, it will cost you $5 million per year.)

This attack also had effects on their shares. ($0.74 per share.)

https://bit.ly/3wcOdHF

"It's a charge that eclipsed that of casino group MGM, which didn't pay a ransom following an attack on its systems last year, and which faces recovery costs of $100 million to rebuild its systems and paying for the fallout from outages, operational disruptions, allegedly leaked data and more."

"The company warned that, financially, the total cost of the cyberattack is estimated to be between $1.35 billion and $1.6 billion for calendar year 2024."

Is China a (Digital) Threat to Global Health?

According to me USA wants to "bite" China somehow and is trying to find some excuses for it. Nowadays the hot topic is "Covid-19" between them.

But care must be taken in case of the allegations are true, the health care organizations and pharmaceutical companies DO have to be careful against the cyber threats,

(News from cyberscoop.com)

"The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI on Wednesday blamed hackers linked with the Chinese government for attempting to steal U.S. research into a coronavirus vaccine,..."

"The U.S. agencies accused Chinese hackers as well as spies of trying to pilfer intellectual property and other information related to coronavirus treatments."

"Beijing has denied all of those allegations. “It is immoral to target China with rumors and slanders in the absence of any evidence,” Zhao Lijian, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, said Monday after media reports that the DHS-FBI statement was imminent."

"...The Trump administration has accused Beijing of misleading the world about the virus’s severity, which first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The White House has also labeled the illness the “Chinese virus” as the U.S. federal government has struggled to respond to an outbreak that has infected some 1.4 million people in the U.S."

"Tonya Ugoretz, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, said last month that state-sponsored hackers were spying on U.S. organizations researching the coronavirus, but did not name a specific government. Last week, cybersecurity officials from DHS and Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre echoed that warning by saying that spies are targeting multiple global health care organizations and pharmaceutical companies worldwide."

"This would not be the first time that Chinese hackers have been mobilized in Beijing’s response to a public health threat. Faced with a surging cancer rate in China, hackers have repeatedly targeted organizations conducting cancer research, according  to cybersecurity company FireEye."

(For more: https://www.cyberscoop.com/coronavirus-vaccine-china-hacking-dhs-fbi/)