Fergie's Tech Blog

SecureWorks: Hacker Attacks Targeting Healthcare Organizations Increase 85%

Via the SecureWorks Research Blog.

SecureWorks [...] has seen an 85% increase in the number of attempted attacks directed toward its healthcare clients by Internet hackers. Attempted attacks have increased from an average of 11,146 per healthcare client per day in the first half of 2007 to an average of 20,630 per healthcare client per day in the last half of 2007 thru January 2008.

Hunter King and Don Jackson, security researchers with SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit, attribute the increase in attacks to several factors. These include the increase in client-side attacks (attacks against the employees' pc's), the fact that healthcare organizations have large attack surfaces in which hackers can try and break in, the volume of personal, identifiable information and health insurance credentials being stored by healthcare organizations, and the valuable computing resources available to healthcare entities.

posted by Fergie @ 2/13/2008 06:24:00 PM