The health care sector has become the hot target for hackers in recent months, according to researchers at Symantec, a leading cybersecurity company that says it’s also seeing big increases in “spear-phishing,” ”ransomware” and efforts to exploit newly discovered vulnerabilities in software used by a wide range of industries.
After a wave of high-profile attacks on banks and retailers over the last two years, almost 80 percent of the calls to Symantec’s global “incident response” service since December have come from health organizations, said Robert Shaker, a Symantec official who oversees the commercial service.
While usually seeking valuable patient and employee data, hackers who target health organizations may inadvertently disrupt computer systems that oversee medication and other life-saving treatments, Shaker said during a press event Monday.
Higher education is “another area very similar to health care,” where administrators have historically been less focused on computer security, said Shaker. He noted that university computer networks hold a variety of valuable data, including financial records for students and employees, as well as scientific and medical research.
Along with an overall jump in the volume of malicious software, Symantec said it’s seeing an increase in software designed specifically to siphon information from smartphones and other mobile gadgets. It also counted a surge in certain kinds of “spear-phishing” attacks, in which hackers send deceptive email or text messages to consumers or company employees, hoping they will click on a link that infects their computers with malware.
In a particularly dramatic trend, Symantec reported almost 9 million incidents of “ransomware” attacks last year, more than double the total from 2013. “Ransomware” programs aim to extort money from computer users through various threats. Some hackers have added extra code to “ransomware” that remains on a computer and even adapts itself to carry out other tasks, such as siphoning valuable information, said Kevin Haley, Symantec security response director.
Hackers are also increasingly using automated software that spams companies or repeatedly probes their networks for vulnerabilities, which means they can launch multiple attacks with less effort, said author and security expert Marc Goodman, who spoke at the Symantec event……..
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