Cybercriminals Have A New Favourite: How Prepared Is India’s Healthcare Sector To Fight Rising Challenge

New Delhi: Already reeling under the challenges thrown by a global pandemic, the year 2020 seems to be particularly hard for India’s healthcare sector. It is now also battling another threat – that of rising cyber attacks.

In recent months the Indian healthcare sector has seen a sharp surge in the cases of cyber attacks, data breach and other sophisticated attempts which were capable of crippling their digital infrastructure.

The healthcare sector has emerged as the most critical area in 2020 due to pandemic. As more and more people were dependent on health care infrastructure and special boost by the government was given to strengthen the system, it has also attracted hackers and cyber criminals.

According to experts, it is most crucial to protect digital assets of our hospitals, testing labs, pharma companies from high-tech attacks.

Data is the new gold and cybercriminals are always on a lookout for it. Hospitals and health institution are goldmines for data. A hospital stores all personal data followed by medical data and credentials.

Usually, a huge amount of information/data flow in Healthcare institutions in various forms like pharmacies, billing, insurance claim and other clinical paperwork. The information can usually contain a person’s name, address, phone number, medical insurance details, beneficiary information, financial account numbers, biometric data, facial images etc.

Result of this the incidents of hacking attempts and breaches have multiplied in the healthcare industry especially during the coronavirus pandemic.

According to Verizon’s annual Data Breach Investigations Report 2020, financially motivated criminal groups continue to target the healthcare industry via ransomware attacks.

Earlier this month, Pharmaceutical firm Lupin admitted that it was hit by a cyberattack that affected some of its IT systems. Without disclosing the magnitude of the loss, the Mumbai based pharma company said that its core system and the operation remained safe. Lupin became the second major Indian pharmaceutical company to be hit by a similar attack.

The attack came just a few days after Dr Reddy’s Laboratories announced that it has temporarily shutdown production across its key plants due to a massive cyberattack.

Also Read: Cyber Attack On Dr Reddy’s Laboratories: Data Centers Isolated, Production Across Plants Shut

The company admitted a major cyber attack on their digital infrastructure due to which they have isolated all data centre services and are taking required preventive actions.

Before this Dr Lal PathLabs, one of the largest lab testing labs in India reportedly faced a major data leak after it had kept the huge data of its patients on a public server unprotected for months.

Also Read: Dr Lal PathLabs data leak: Fine up to Rs 5 crore can be imposed as millions of patients at risk

The entire health sector is sitting on huge patients, research and scientific data which makes the sector most vulnerable. Cybercriminals are looking for new ways to extract these data or infect the server with ransomware to extort money from these companies.

Reacting to these breaches India’s second-largest drugmaker Cipla Ltd has asked its information technology team to be “paranoid” about its cybersecurity following attacks on two large pharmaceutical firms, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd and Lupin.

In June, Sai Krishna Kothapalli, CEO of Hackrew and IIT Guwahati graduate in his blog explained that how he was able to view, edit and delete classified personal information of lakhs of patients all over India.

Healthcare organizations need to conduct a proper risk assessment to secure their data and other digital assets.