Threat intelligence analyst documents, assesses 117 healthcare ransomware incidents

When a business system breaks due to patching malfunctions, they lose money. When a healthcare system breaks, it can put lives at risk. Ransomware attacks against healthcare providers can disrupt patient services, create confusion and force providers to shut down.

Given that these attacks are such a persistent concern, Allan Liska, threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future, a vendor of a threat intelligence system powered by machine learning, was surprised at the dearth of research into the actual scope of ransomware attacks against healthcare providers.

It turns out that collecting data on these attacks is more complex than it first appears. Because a number of incidents are not reported to HHS, which makes it very hard to determine how exhaustive the catalog of ransomware attacks is.