Why are hospitals becoming more of a target for ransomware attacks?

A ransomware attack against a lab provider disrupted several hospitals and primary care doctors in London this week, delaying operations and blood tests.

The attack had a “significant impact,” with the lab provider Synnovis stating it was a “harsh reminder that this sort of attack can happen to anyone at any time,” but the NHS does not know the full impact on data at this point.

“All urgent and emergency services remain open as usual and the majority of outpatient services continue to operate as normal,” an NHS spokesperson said on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, some operations and procedures which rely more heavily on pathology services have been postponed, and blood testing is being prioritised for the most urgent cases, meaning patients have had phlebotomy appointments cancelled”.

A ransomware attack is one in which malware prevents people from accessing files to force the victim to pay for access.

It reflects what experts have called a growing trend of cyber incidents in the health sector.

European healthcare sector ‘increasingly targeted’

“The healthcare sector has been increasingly targeted as digitalisation has expanded the attack surface and giving rise to increased phishing and ransomware attacks,” Laura Heuvinck, a spokesperson at the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), told Euronews Health.

An ENISA report published last year found that ransomware attacks represented 54 per cent of cyber incidents in the sector from January 2021 to March 2023, with this type of attack being named a “prime threat in the health sector”.

Yet just 23 per cent of health sector organisations had a dedicated ransomware programme in 2023, the agency said.

The report, which covered part of the COVID-19 pandemic era where the health sector was a primary target, found that most of those behind the ransomware attacks were driven by financial gain.

“Attacks mostly target patients’ data such as electronic health records which are then used for example for fraud, identity theft or use sensitive data for extorsion,” the agency spokesperson added.

EU healthcare providers and hospitals were particularly affected by the incidents compared to health authorities and the pharmaceutical…