With stolen medical records being sold on the black market for up to 60 times that of stolen credit card data, it's no wonder that healthcare organizations are consistently ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in lists of industries with the highest amount of data breaches.
Hackers sell patient data to interested buyers in the underground online marketplace. Cyber gangs and individuals buy the data to create and market health insurance cards, which people will use to obtain surgeries and prescription drugs.
In addition to medication identity theft, threat actors may deny a healthcare organization access to its critical data and demand a ransom for it. Healthcare IT News reported that as many as 75 percent of U.S. hospitals responding to a poll this past April could have been hit with ransomware in the last year and not even know it. That’s possible as attackers can stay hidden in networks, unleashing ransomware that doesn’t show up until someone tries to open a file.
