A cybersecurity company reported that the healthcare sector has been increasingly targeted by hackers in recent months.
Symantec Corp., one of the country’s biggest sellers of software and expertise to defend against cyberattacks, reported an increase in efforts to exploit software used by organizations in the healthcare industry this week. They reported that almost 80 percent of problems recorded by their incident response service have come from health organizations since December.
Hackers targeting healthcare are generally after patient and employee data but may also disrupt medication and treatment data on computer systems, according to m.startribune.com.
In a press event on April 13, Symantec official Robert Shaker said hackers go to whatever industry they think is most vulnerable and predicted schools and universities may be the next targets.
Last year Symantec reported almost 9 million incidents of “ransomware”, which is when a hacker stops access to an organization’s computer system until that organization pays the hacker. That number is more than twice the 2013 figure.
