Medibank is one of the largest national health insurance providers in Australia. With their late digital security measures, it seems like they have realized the severity of ransomware threat. We have seen it how this year has seen a significant rise in ransomware attacks on healthcare facilities.
Due to the sensitive nature of their data and operations, healthcare facilities are more vulnerable to ransomware attacks and cryptovirological operators have good prospects of ripping off the victim for ransomware removal.
Medibank Experienced Frequent Cryptographic Attacks
For many, it might be astounding to know, but Medibank used to experiences cryptographic penetrations every other month, as admitted by chief information security officer of the company. However, the company’s robust ransomware removal activities and effective data backup practices protected the company from losing any significant data.
But as we know that no matter how agile ransomware removal activities are, once the attack has taken place it takes time to get back the system to its original state. For healthcare facilities, downtime is very critical. An extended downtime resulting in disruption of services can literally put the lives of many patients in danger.
Moreover, such attacks don’t turn out good for the reputation of the affected healthcare facility. Allscripts, a private US healthcare company with its operations spread in many states sustained a ransomware attack in March. Although their security experts along with third-party resources were able to conclude ransom removal in the quickest time possible, but they still had to experience over six days of downtime, resulting in the disruption of 200 medical services.
Prevention is Always Better
To reduce the brunt of frequent downtime occurrences, even the minor ones, Medibank have adopted proactive approach against the cryptovirological threat. Instead of relying on ransomware removal measures only, they have integrated some security features to prevent ransomware attacks from happening in the first place.
For instance, with the help of end-point protection measures and multi-platform approach, they have succeeded in protecting most of the company’s back-end infrastructure. According to CISO of the company, these security measures have helped in limiting cryptographic infiltrations that consequently help in being less reliant on ransomware removal measures.
