The U.S. Department of Human Services has released new guidance for health care companies that focuses on the growing threat of ransomware, stresses the need for better education and regular backups, and confirms that a ransomware attack against plain-text health information is, in fact, a breach that must be disclosed Credit: Thinkstock The U.S. Department of Human Services has released new guidance for health care organizations that focuses on the growing threat of ransomware, stresses the need for better education and regular backups, and confirms that a ransomware attack against plain-text health information is, in fact, a breach that must be disclosed.The guidance recommends that organizations identify the risks facing their patient information, create a plan to address those links, set up procedures to protect systems from malware, train users to spot malware, limit access to sensitive information to just the people who need it most, and have a disaster recovery plan that includes frequent data backups.“The new guidance, to a great extent reiterates what has already been in place, but is a bit more specific,” said Dana Simberkoff, Chief Compliance and Risk Officer at Jersey City, NJ-based AvePoint Inc. “The emphasis is on education, which is a good component of a good data protection program.”Ransomware typically gets onto a system through malicious email attachments or links to malicious websites, both of which can be addressed to some degree with employee education. “The second mistake organizations make is granting too much access to people who don’t need access to that information,” she said. “Organizations should focus on providing the least access possible for employees to do their jobs.”Understaffed IT departments, however, often err on the side of too much access, she said. “By giving people more access than they need, they avoid having those folks come back every time they need something,” she said.However, limiting the access rights of individual users means that if those users get effective, there’s less data that the malware can get to.The new guidance is a summary of industry best practices, which organizations should already have been doing, she said.“The only thing that’s surprising about the guidance s that it’s a little bit late,” she said.In addition to providing recommendations for organizations to help them defend against ransomware, the new guidance also clarifies that a ransomware attack does, in fact, count as a breach because “unauthorized individuals have taken possession or control of the information.”“When electronic protected health information is encrypted as the result of a ransomware attack, a breach has occurred,” the HHS guidance said.One exception, however, is if the data had already been encrypted by the organization itself, and the hackers who got access to it would not have been able to do anything with it. But it depends on the type of encryption.For example, if a cybercriminal gets access to a laptop with full disk encryption, and the laptop is powered down, the that would be unreadable to the attacker.That’s not the case if the laptop was powered up, however, and the user was logged in. “If the ransomware accesses the file containing the PHI, the file containing the PHI will be transparently decrypted by the full disk encryption solution and access permitted with the same access levels granted to the user,” the guidance said. Related content news Okta launches Cybersecurity Workforce Development Initiative New philanthropic and educational grants aim to advance inclusive pathways into cybersecurity and technology careers. By Michael Hill Oct 04, 2023 3 mins IT Skills Careers Security news New critical AI vulnerabilities in TorchServe put thousands of AI models at risk The vulnerabilities can completely compromise the AI infrastructure of the world’s biggest businesses, Oligo Security said. By Shweta Sharma Oct 04, 2023 4 mins Vulnerabilities news ChatGPT “not a reliable” tool for detecting vulnerabilities in developed code NCC Group report claims machine learning models show strong promise in detecting novel zero-day attacks. By Michael Hill Oct 04, 2023 3 mins DevSecOps Generative AI Vulnerabilities news Google Chrome zero-day jumps onto CISA's known vulnerability list A serious security flaw in Google Chrome, which was discovered under active exploitation in the wild, is a new addition to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency’s Known Exploited vulnerabilities catalog. By Jon Gold Oct 03, 2023 3 mins Zero-day vulnerability Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe