Cyber Attacks Cause Data Loss to Community Health Systems

Tennessee situated Community Health Systems Inc., a major hospital group within USA, of late, stated that a cyber-attack from outside the organization targeted its PC-network once in April followed with another in June 2014 leading to massive data-loss of about 4.5m people, published The Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2014.

Mandiant, an ancillary of FireEye a security company and forensic expert for CHS together with the hospital itself firmly think that the attack represented an APT (advanced persistent threat) launched from China that utilized an exceedingly sophisticated malware as well as technique for striking the hospital PCs.

As per Mandiant, the gang behind the hack has been identified as APT-18.

Mandiant's Managing Director Charles Carmakal stated that the gang characteristically attacked organizations within industries such as healthcare, engineering and construction, defense and aerospace, financial services and technology. Threatpost.com published this, August 18, 2014.

Carmakal further stated that the gang was notorious for capturing intellectual property associated with pharmaceutical manufacturing and medical technology.

Carmakal preferred eluding queries regarding how the computer systems were hacked, the kind of malware utilized; alternatively what means helped CHS to know about the assault, as investigation was on by both law enforcement and the organization.

The hospital chain is already informing its patients whose data has been affected while providing them with services for safeguarding their credentials from ID-theft. The organization has its own leases alternatively runs over 200 hospices within 29 states.

PC-hacks like that of the CHS are numerous in USA which have made end-users susceptible to credit card scams and/or ID-theft. Apparently, too little data can be said as really safe from cyber-thieves in the present times, remark security specialists.

Lieberman Software President Philip Lieberman states that numerous organizations providing healthcare haven't endowed enormously into IT security, published securityweek.com, August 19, 2014.

Global Security Strategist Trey Ford at Rapid7 another security company contended that hospitals were a very difficult network ambience for keeping safe, with safeguarding along with enhancing human lives preceding all their other concerns. For Internet security experts, myriad challenges confront the healthcare environment while this possibly represents a very difficult area for protection. Securityweek.com published this.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/27/2014