Ransomware Plague

Think of the most important institutions that store your data and would suffer the most if this data became compromised. You would probably think that these institutions would have the latest and greatest cyber security and be proactive in preventing attacks on their pivotal confidential data. However, places like hospitals, police stations, and fire departments often don’t have the best cybersecurity and have found themselves in the crosshairs of hackers. A type of cyberattack known as “Ransomware” has the unsuspecting operator download a file or open an attachment that then encrypts their entire hard drive and demands a payment in order to access their data again. The creation of the bitcoin in 2009, which allows users to be paid untraceable and anonymously has caused a resurgence of ransomware attacks, despite the software being around since the 1980s. In 2014, ransomware attacks rose 113% and are only expected to become more prevalent (Sneed). By asking people for a small sum of several hundred dollars within a fixed time or else all of their data will be erased, hackers have been rather successful as people don’t want to see all of their hard work, memories, music, important career information, etc. be erased in the blink of an eye. The hackers who utilize this technology have found a “sweet spot” of around $10,000 for businesses which is small enough that the attacks don’t receive national news or FBI intervention, but will amount to millions of dollars when many locations are attacked.

The reason these high profile institutions such as hospitals are attacked more heavily than a local business, is because the data is much more critical to these organizations and they are more willing to pay. For example, if a fire department has their computerized dispatch system compromised, they cannot dispatch personnel to emergency situations, having disastrous consequences. With more than 3.5 million records compromised in 2016 alone and about 4 breaches per week in the healthcare sector alone, Ransomware is becoming more lucrative to hackers and drawing more criminals to this endeavor (Akpan). With all of the data they house, institutions like hospitals simply can’t upgrade to the latest and greatest cyber security and are often left operating with outdated systems, leaving them vulnerable. The worst part of the whole scheme is that the money obtained in these Ransomware attacks is often funding criminal organizations “tied up in terrible things like human trafficking” (Sneed).

With society becoming increasingly dependent on technology, critical infrastructure such as power grids and dams could be susceptible to attacks. The integration of technology into infrastructure streamlines many processes and reduces inefficiency when you can computerize everything, however, it endangers the public if these systems are compromised from attacks. Looking to the future, the best thing organizations can do is follow better security practices and most importantly back up their data. The hacker’s attacks rely on the encrypted data they compromised being irreplaceable. However, if organizations had extensive backup systems in place such as on hard drives or cloud “warehouses” the compromised data could be replaced and operations could continue like normal.  

Resources

Akpan, Nsikan. "Hacking Health Care Records Reaches Epidemic Proportions." Scientific American. N.p., 29 Mar. 2016. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

Sneed, Annie. "The Most Vulnerable Ransomware Targets Are the Institutions We Rely On Most." Scientific American. N.p., 23 Mar. 2016. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.