Cyberattacks against the health-care sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic

What is it about?

This paper aims to analyze the changes in cyberattacks against the healthcare sector during the COVID19 pandemic. The changes in cyberattacks of the healthcare sector are analyzed by examination of the number and essence of published news concerning cybersecurity attacks on the healthcare sector during 2019 and compared them to those published during 2020, based on two main websites, which review such incidents. The study found that there was a significant growth in reports of cyberattacks on the healthcare sector. Moreover, the number of cyberattacks fit interestingly to the pattern of waves of the disease, which expanded worldwide. During the first wave the number of reports was doubled or even tripled, compared to the same period in 2019, a tendency that was slightly waned afterwards. This study helps to deepen the awareness of information security implications of a potential global devastating crisis, even in the cybersecurity domain, and on the healthcare sector, among various other affected sectors and domains. COVID19 pandemic created long-term wide-range changes that affects every individual and sector, mainly due to the shift to remote working model, which impose long-term new cybersecurity changes, among them, to the healthcare industry. This article extends the existing information on implication of remote working model on information security and of the COVID19 pandemic and global crisis on the cybersecurity of healthcare institutions around the world.

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