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How a single click led to Waikato hospitals chaos

Announcement posted by PR Deadlines 20 May 2021

HAMILTON, May 20. Doctors, surgeons, nurses and administrative staff at Waikato Hospital were taking notes using pen and paper on Wednesday morning, following a cyber attack.

The ransomware attack on Tuesday crashed Waikato District Health Board’s IT systems including computers and phones, affecting Waikato's four hospitals. It is believed to have resulted after an employee clicked through to a malware link.

“Thankfully no lives have been lost, but the anxiety, disruption and lost income costs will be substantial,” said Wayne Neich from cyber security firm Bitglass ANZ. 

He cautioned: “We must wait for root cause analysis to understand exactly what happened, but it’s a timely reminder for all involved in healthcare and other critical industries.” 

Bitglass offers the following advice on what all organisations, including those in healthcare, can do to protect themselves:

Password123

It takes on one employee using an insecure password across multiple accounts, to make is easier for cyber criminals to steal corporate information wherever that password is used. 

In light of this, organizations should mandate unique passwords of sufficient length and complexity for ever user’s SaaS accounts. Additionally, requiring employees to change their passwords regularly - perhaps every other month - can provide an additional layer of security.

Authenticate or else

Whether it occurs through employee carelessness, a breach from a hacker, or a combination of the two, credential compromise is a threat to organizations. As detecting rogue accounts can be a challenge, multi-factor authentication should be employed to verify that accounts are being used by their true owners. 

Before allowing a user to access sensitive data, organizations should require a second level of verification through an email, a text message, or a hardware token (a unique physical item carried by the user).

Data on the go

The rise of BYOD (bring your own device) has given individuals access to corporate data from their unmanaged mobile devices and, consequently, exposed organizations to new threats. In light of this, enterprises must secure BYOD, but do so in a way that is simple to deploy and doesn’t harm device functionality or user privacy. 

Typically this is done through data-centric, agentless security. With these tools, organizations can secure data on unmanaged mobile devices in a timely, secure, non-invasive fashion.

Put the pro in proactive

Often, as more and more data moves to the cloud, organizations fail to monitor and protect it accordingly. They adopt after-the-fact security that can allow months of data exfiltration before detecting any threats or enabling remediation. 

However, in a world with regulatory compliance penalties, well-informed consumers, and hackers who can steal massive amounts of data in an instant, a reactive posture is not adequate. 

Organizations should adopt proactive cloud security platforms that enable real-time detection of malicious activity. Failure to utilize tools that respond to threats the moment they occur can prove disastrous for an organization’s security, finances, reputation, and livelihood.

More malware - more problems

With all of the cloud applications and devices storing, uploading, and downloading data, malware has a number of attack surfaces it can use to infect organizations. If a single device uploads a contaminated file to the cloud, it can spread to connected cloud apps and other users who download said file. 

While protecting endpoints from malware is necessary, it is no longer sufficient. Today, organizations must deploy anti-malware capabilities that can defend from threats at upload, threats at download, and threats already resting in cloud applications. Defences must lie in wait wherever data moves.

To further protect an organisation from malware threats launched from an email phishing attack, ensure that the organization’s secure web gateway (SWG) is configured to block Zero Day phishing attacks by enabling Block ‘Uncategorised’

About Bitglass

Bitglass’ Total Cloud Security Platform is the only secure access service edge offering that combines a Gartner-MQ-Leading cloud access security broker, the world’s only on-device secure web gateway, and zero trust network access to secure any interaction. Its Polyscale Architecture boasts an industry-leading uptime of 99.99 percent and delivers unrivaled performance and real-time scalability to any location in the world. Based in Silicon Valley with offices worldwide, the company is backed by Tier 1 investors and was founded in 2013 by a team of industry veterans with a proven track record of innovation and execution.

Contact

Wayne Neich, Bitglass ANZ

wneich@bitglass.com

+61 408 920 304