Research has shown that in the past year cyberattackers have increasingly targeted healthcare organisations for deploying ransomware and other cyber-attacks. The annual X-Force Threat Intelligence research was released on Wednesday, which tracks the evolution of new threats, malware development and cyberattacks. The most notable trend was how many threat actors targeted their malicious campaigns at organisations involved in fighting the coronavirus pandemic throughout the last year. In fact, the research suggests that these organisations suffered double the ‘usual’ rate of attacks. Those targeted involved hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical companies, and energy firms.
This change in focus could be attributed to the fact that these types of firms were more likely to pay up if ransomware was deployed. IBM states that this is a result of healthcare organisations not being able to afford downtime, as it could impact their COVID-19 programmes or put patients at risk.
