The FBI says healthcare suffered more ransomware attacks than any other industry in 2022, though the agency may have helped stop more, BankInfoSecurity reported
The agency received reports of 871 ransomware incidents affecting critical infrastructure industries last year, though only about a quarter of such events are likely reported, according to the Feb. 27 story. The top ransomware strains were, in order, LockBit, BlackCat and Hive.
Ransomware payments declined by about 40 percent in 2022, according to Coveware, which attributed the drop to the FBI "putting a focus on helping victims and imposing costs to the economic levers that make cybercrime so profitable," BankInfoSecurity reported.
The FBI prevented two potential ransomware attacks on hospitals: Boston Children's Hospital in 2021 and an Omaha, Neb., hospital last year, according to the story. The latter interception happened when Ireland's national police force spotted a precursor to a ransomware attack at the hospital and alerted the FBI's legal attache in London.
"The hospital was able to take immediate action, and they did confirm that they had not been aware of this activity before. They did not realize this attack was about to occur," said David Scott, deputy assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division, speaking at the Futurescot conference Feb. 27 in Glasgow, Scotland, according to the article. "So the hospital was able to take this information, prevent any data exfiltration, prevent any ransomware deployment and prevent any impact on medical services for patients. All of that occurred in an hour to two hours total."