Attacks on healthcare web applications rising, HHS says

The HHS Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center issued an alert July 21 about an increase in web application attacks on the healthcare sector. 

Five things to know:

1. Web application attacks are conducted by financially motivated cybercriminals and state-sponsored hackers.
   
   
2. Web application attacks are the No. 1 avenue of breach for healthcare attacks, according to the 2022 "Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report."
   
   
3. Web application attacks target web servers accessible from the internet and use stolen credentials to gain access to the application or exploit vulnerabilities in the application or underlying architecture.
   
   
4. These attacks are conducted to gain access to sensitive data and to access applications and networks for espionage or for extortion.
   
   
5. The HHS recommends implementing web application firewalls, security testing and secure development testing to curb and protect against web application attacks.