IT Support in Los Angeles Helps Healthcare Facilities Avoid Ransomware

Hospitals are at Heightened Risk for a Ransomware Attack

IT support in Los Angeles is essential to the healthcare industry for a number of reasons:

• Life-saving technological breakthroughs
• Information pooling and sharing
• Expedited patient record keeping
• Securing against cybercrime

Out of all these, the last is the most important. Certainly, technological breakthroughs have helped increase the efficacy of medicine in modernity. Pooling and sharing information is likewise very important, as is more accurate record keeping. But, cybercrime can kill people while fundamentally undermining a medical operation. Most pernicious among cybercrime threats is ransomware.

Ransomware holds files in an encrypted, non-accessible status against a fee. The fee is usually large and often in Bitcoin--- which many hospitals don't have immediately on hand. Hospitals are more likely to pay than other targets because when doctors are locked out of patient records in the middle of an operation, that patient could die on the surgery table. So, if ransomware infects the data systems of a medical institution, the instinct is to pay it immediately. The thing is a cybercrime operation that gets money from a hospital is now at an increased likelihood of "double-dipping." They know that, until that particular hospital gets better security, they can keep stealing from them.

Diversity of Infection

Add to that the astonishingly diverse ways ransomware can infect a system and it's easy to see that there is a very clear and present danger for hospitals that don't have protection. IT support in Los Angeles is going to be on the edge of development and cognizant of tech industry trends. For example, the WannaCry attack earlier in June 2017. The NSA built a backdoor into Windows operating systems. That information was leaked in March 2017, and by late May, hackers had developed a ransomware worm that exploited SMB protocols without users accidentally ushering in the virus. Think of Ransomware like a vampire--- it must be invited in. Hackers get users to do this through apps, "media players," emails, fake social media confirmation pages--- the list goes on. With WannaCry, it was like the vampires found a way into a home that didn't require a specific invitation. It was like there was a door with a heading that said: "All who enter are welcome-- -please, come inside!" The ransomware vampires said: "Okay, then!" and flapped their batty selves into the business's data center.

Now, when the leak was made public, a "patch" was sent out. Businesses that used the patch weren't hacked, and those who didn't were hit. WannaCry affected 150+ countries in just weeks, costing many businesses substantial assets--- and that likely includes some hospitals. However, those businesses wise enough to use tech solutions were protected, because the MSPs they worked with were up-to-date on trends and threats in the technology world.

Digital Insurance

If you want your healthcare facility to be truly efficacious and cost-effective, you need some kind of tech support which can help systems be safeguarded against ransomware attacks and even advise such medical businesses pertaining to tech trends which may be positive or negative, like WannaCry. IT support in Los Angeles through DCG Technical Solutions, Inc. provides top-tier tech support and protection against multiple echelons of cybercrime, not just ransomware. Contact us for solutions that will safeguard your healthcare facility and may even save lives.