The healthcare industry will remain a magnet for cybercrime in 2018. Things are bad and getting worse by the day in this industry.

In a recent benchmark study, 78 percent of healthcare providers claimed they experienced a malware or ransomware attack in the last year.

Large healthcare providers, it should be noted, are especially at risk for cybercrime. Larger companies reported more ransomware or malware attacks in the last 12 months than smaller organizations. 63 percent of large facilities had both ransomware and malware attacks in the last year. 24 percent of intermediate organizations reported both types of incidents. And 22 percent of small to medium-sized healthcare providers did so.

43 percent of large providers reported at least 16 malware or ransomware attacks in the last 12 months.

Here are the top digital security priorities for healthcare providers, as evidenced in the report:

Email security: 93 percent of respondents said that email is mission critical to their organization. And 87 percent of respondents believe that email-related security threats will increase or increase significantly in the future.

Employee training: For 22 percent of respondents, training employees to spot security risks is a top challenge.

Cybersecurity staffing: 19 percent of respondents stated that cybersecurity staffing was a main concern; a challenge, it should be noted, that can be solved by working with a managed services provider (MSP) like Apex Technology Services.

Apex can provide a variety of important cybersecurity services, ranging from rapid-response troubleshooting to real-time threat detection and mitigation technologies to comprehensive cybersecurity training. With the help of Apex Technology Services, your team can build a strong cybersecurity culture — and one that is better prepared to handle the variety of sophisticated threats it is now facing.

Here are some of the areas all organizations looking to promote a cybersecurity culture need to focus on.

1.    Cybersecurity training must be done regularly.

2.    Auditing and documentation must be performed regularly to ensure systems are secure.

3.    Anomaly detection should be running constantly to detect threats as they emerge.

4.    Penetration testing shows if systems can easily be reached from the outside. Here is a case where this test might have saved two company’s’ reputations from being destroyed.

5.    Network forensics for when a breach eventually occurs. The bad guys always seem to get in eventually.

6.    An action plan to follow when a breach does occur. Once it happens, few will have the clear heads needed to “wing it” correctly. Equifax botched it’s response in what is being called a PR catastrophe.

To ensure your organization is safe – even if you have internal IT, hire an experienced MSP or MSSP like Apex Technology Services.