Security News > 2020 > January > Nation-State Attacks: Why Healthcare Must Prepare

As tensions between the U.S. and Iran continue to rise, healthcare organizations need to exercise extra vigilance in shoring up their security to defend against potential Iranian cyberattacks on critical infrastructure sectors, says Errol Weiss, chief security officer of the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

Destructive "Wiper" attacks were carried out by Iran against Saudi Aramco computers in 2012 and the Las Vegas Sands casino in 2014, as well as a long series of distributed denial-of-service attacks on U.S. banks in 2012 and 2013.

"There are certainly occurrences where the healthcare sector has had collateral damage from attacks that Iran launched at other targets," Weiss notes.

To prepare for potential nation-state attacks, he says, healthcare organizations should assess their back-ups, practice incident response, ensure that business continuity plans are in place, conduct vulnerability scanning and apply updated patches.

He's co-chair of a task group of the Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council, a public/private collaborative for improving cybersecurity in the healthcare sector.

News URL

https://www.inforisktoday.com/interviews/nation-state-attacks-healthcare-must-prepare-i-4568