ORANGE, Calif., July 31, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With cyberattacks on the rise, Ironwall by Incogni, a leading provider of online privacy protection tools and services, today advocated for healthcare organizations to adopt more stringent policies around the protection of patient data. This can be accomplished by expanding efforts to safeguard employee data readily found online—essentially adding what should be any company’s first layer of defense to thwart potential attacks against the enterprise.
According to Incogni, there have been 2,213 breaches targeting healthcare since 2020, with 152 million affected individuals, which corresponds to almost half of the US population. This year alone there have already been ten healthcare breaches affecting more than 570,000 people, and there are still 293 open cases involving some 36 million profiles.
A devastating cyberattack on Ascension, a St. Louis-based healthcare network that includes 140 hospitals and 40 senior living facilities in 19 states, disrupted access to electronic health records, negatively impacted patient care, and removed files from seven of the system's 25,000 servers, possibly exposing patient data. Hackers gained access to Ascension’s IT systems and operations because one employee believed a phishing email was legitimate and downloaded a malicious file.
“This is how ransomware is delivered now, and it makes every employee in your organization a potential target, from the seasoned CEO to the recently hired receptionist,” said Ron Zayas, CEO of Ironwall by Incogni. “Through AI and social engineering methods, phishing scams have become more customized and sophisticated. Even the most vigilant of employees can be duped—and all it takes is one click on one link to create a disaster.”
Such phishing attacks often rely on personal information to mislead an email recipient. “People are far more likely to click on a link if they believe the email is coming from a person or company familiar to them or if it contains information that only a close friend or relative would know,” added Zayas.
Unfortunately, private information about all of us—home address, friends, relatives, personal habits, even photos—is now accessible online with a simple Google search, to be easily obtained and weaponized. But what is public now can be made private again, and authentic identifying content such as phone numbers and email addresses can be replaced with alias content that cannot be traced back to the user.
“Cost-effective solutions are available if companies would only take advantage of them,” Zayas offered. “A proactive investment in privacy protection is the best insurance against having to pay millions after a ransomware attack – not to mention the reputational hit that accompanies the leak of patient data, and the class action suits that follow.”
And while the impetus should be on organizations to protect themselves, individuals are also vulnerable outside of work, and can benefit from online privacy protection to keep their families safe from having their identifying information weaponized.
To learn more about Ironwall by Incogni, click here. For a deeper dive into the current state of online privacy and how it’s being compromised, download “The Weaponization of Privacy: Why It Will Get Worse, and How You Can Stop It” white paper.
Images to accompany this release can be found here.
About Ironwall by Incogni
Ironwall by Incogni strongly supports the idea of a safe and private internet. As a legally contracted agent, Ironwall works with superior courts, social work departments, and law enforcement agencies to search and remove personal information from websites in violation of state and federal privacy restrictions. Ironwall is a member of the Surfshark and NordSec family of companies. For more information, visit https://ironwall360.com/.
Editorial Contact:
David Hofstede
844-476-6360 x600
david.hofstede@360civic.com
