MDaemon Technologies Blog

It’s OK, we understand. You thought you and your employees would all be safely back in the office by now. However, we’re all still adjusting to this new normal of exponentially more remote working – and exponentially more cyberattacks. Every day, hackers seek to exploit not only fear and insecurity caused by the pandemic, but the security loopholes created as more employees access their email and other work systems from remote devices. According to one report, streaming phishing sites saw an 85-percent increase from January to March, with more than 209 malicious websites being created every day. A record 25,000 confirmed phishing pages were created on March 19 alone!

As long as healthcare organizations continue to use email, cybercriminals will find new ways to exploit security gaps, software bugs, and basic human nature to extort millions of dollars from their victims. In just the first six months of this year, Becker’s Hospital Review has noted more than 65 separate incidents of malware, ransomware and phishing attacks on healthcare providers, ranging from Alaska and Hawaii to Florida and Maine. These attacks affected more than 1.14 million patient records in just the cases that released statistics; the true number of those affected is much higher. While one-third of these attacks are specifically noted as being email-related, again, the true number is likely much higher.

Office 365 is one of the world’s most commonly used software packages -- it’s in use by more than 1 million companies worldwide. The software suite announced more than 200 million individual users back in October 2019 and is adding about 3 million users each month.

Staying informed of the latest data privacy regulations as they apply to healthcare can be challenging. Not only are there a plethora of different security and retention requirements, but the risk of failure is higher than in any other sector:

We live in an era where the amount of valuable data businesses must store is increasing at an unprecedented pace. Consequently, the number of cyber criminals trying to gain access to that data is also increasing. In fact, according to a report released last year by Osterman Research, 81% of organizations have been the victim of some type of data breach, targeted email attack, successful phishing attack or other cyber security incident during the previous 12 months. And with the surge of people working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, these numbers are only going to go up.

The COVID-19 crisis has changed the way we approach data privacy and email security as the transition to working from home has been accompanied by a growing surge of Coronavirus themed phishing scams and spoofed websites used to distribute malware or lure victims into providing confidential information.

At about this time last year, Office 365 had around 155 million users, and businesses continue to adopt its services at a rate of around 3 million users per month. But as subscription rates continue to grow, it becomes a growing target for cybercriminals to spread phishing and ransomware attacks.

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