Cyberattacks Targeted Medical Devices Decreased To 19% In 2019

It has already been two years after the Wannacry ransomware attack which crippled many organizations and medical facilities all over the world. It seems that the healthcare industry has learned the lessons. A recent report has shown that the number of cyberattacks on healthcare devices decreased to only 19% this year from 28% in the previous year.

Kaspersky's report

However, according to Kaspersky (a cybersecurity firm), this decline in the number of cyberattacks against healthcare facilities' devices is not observed everywhere.

Over 7/10 medical devices in the Philippines (about 76 %), Venezuela (77%), Argentina (73%), Libya (75%) are still subjected to many web attacks. This data is the latest one from the company database.

Two other countries located in the APAC region also placed among the 15 nations with the highest detected infections rate, with Thailand with 44% of devices attacked and Bangladesh with 58%.

Kaspersky researchers came up with the data after dividing the number of devices from medical organizations in countries with the number of devices where Kaspersky solutions detected malicious codes.

Medical devices are all computers, tablets, mobiles, server, hospital machines, and IoT gadgets which connect to the healthcare facility's Internet.

Yury Namestnikov

Yury Namestnikov (Head of GReAT team at Kaspersky) has commented on the matter. He said that people have become more aware after the attack "Wannacry". However, many countries are still very lagging behind in protecting medical devices.

He also added that they have observed the chances of getting attacked are linked to the amount of money the government is willing to spend on the cybersecurity in the healthcare sector. Another primary reason is the low awareness of cybersecurity of people who work at the medical facilities.