To my friends-

Discussions about cybersecurity and identity theft protection have become commonplace in today’s business world. Several years ago, the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce hosted a cybersecurity conference to alert business owners to the need for greater awareness of the issues surrounding this issue. Some business owners, particularly owners of smaller businesses, commented about the cost of cybersecurity. Their businesses were too small, they said, to matter much to hackers. The material that I have quoted below from the January 3rd, 2022 issue of The Hacker News is an excerpt from a much longer article discussing the security of medical devices. Read on.

“In May 2017, the first documented ransomware assault on networked medical equipment happened. The worldwide ransomware assault WannaCry compromised radiological and other instruments in several hospitals during its height, after a software failure caused by a cyberattack on its third-party vendor’s oncology cloud service, cancer patients having radiation therapy at four healthcare institutions had to reschedule appointments.

These examples show how cyberattacks and data breaches may have a significant impact on the healthcare industry, heavily reliant on connected medical equipment. PHI (patient health information) captured and stored in these connected medical devices must be secured. Because PHI is transferred over the cloud via server-based systems, making it very susceptible to hackers.

Ransomware attacks on health care professionals have become more common, sophisticated, and severe in recent years. Individual bad actors have been supplanted as the main perpetrators by organized criminal gangs, nation-states, and military groups. Despite great effort, law enforcement and government have been unable to stop the escalating wave of attacks on hospital devices and other key infrastructure. Medical device security will be a key part of hospital cybersecurity as ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations increase.”–The Hacker News, January 3, 2022

Please reread the next-to-last last line of the preceding paragraph. “Despite great effort, law enforcement and government have been unable to stop the escalating wave of attacks . . .”  If you are an owner of a small business, cybersecurity and identity theft protection should be a matter of top-of-mind priority as 2022 gets underway.

All the best to you,

Mark Holland

Your Bridge to the LegalShield Difference
My Bridge Builder, LLC
801-557-7105
mybridgebuilderbank@gmail.com
For more information about the benefits
of LegalShield and IDShield, please visit:
www.mybridgebuilder.com
Worry Less. Live More.