The United States Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a warning yesterday “of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.” The report, issued by the CISA, FBI, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), included several key findings:

CISA Key Findings

• CISA, FBI, and HHS assess malicious cyber actors are targeting the HPH Sector with Trickbot malware, often leading to ransomware attacks, data theft, and the disruption of healthcare services.
• These issues will be particularly challenging for organizations within the COVID-19 pandemic; therefore, administrators will need to balance this risk when determining their cybersecurity investments.

MSPs with clients in the healthcare sector can play a significant role in preventing such ransomware attacks from happening, or, at the least, reduce the damage of a successful ransomware attack through the following methods:

MSP Guidance

• Perform regular backups (both of your internal MSP practice and your clients)
• Maintain multiple (3) copies of critical data stored on at least 2 different devices, with at least 1 of those devices being offline, as opposed to in the cloud.
• Employ (internally and externally for clients) email scanning tools to improve removal of email delivered malware
• Enforce multi-factor authentication across your organization and client base
• Offer regular training and educational briefings (like this one) to your employees and clients regarding ransomware, how it works and how to prevent it.