February 9, 2022
CloudWave’s Tim Quigley Shares Healthcare Cybersecurity/Ransomware Predictions to Watch in 2022 with HIT Consultant
For HIT Consultant, CloudWave Chief Client Officer Tim Quigley highlights his predictions for healthcare cybersecurity and ransomware to watch in 2022:
“Unfortunately, we expect cyber and ransomware attacks on critical institutions such as hospitals increase and become more sophisticated in 2022. This will only be exacerbated by staffing shortages and continuation of remote working. At this point Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) is table stakes for security and increasingly required for cyber insurance coverage. Following MFA, we are seeing clients and their insurers require a new level of backup called ‘immutable backup.’ In cases of ransomware, too often the existing backups are infected along with the primary production environment. An immutable backup is essentially a standalone copy with separate security that is locked to prohibit edits. The concept is similar to a safety deposit box: there are two independent ‘keys’ – security and passwords – outside of the existing environment. That way, in the case of a ransomware attack, the immutable backup is ready to be immediately restored to mitigate the effects of the attack. We expect to see adoption of immutable backups in 2022 similar to the level of MFA adoption in 2021.”