Canada Cybersecurity: Health Care Industry Battles Cyberattacks as Experts Call-in Federal Support

Canada’s hospitals and clinics are suffering massive cyber threats as the cyberattacks targeting the Canadian healthcare industry saw a sudden rise in number.

Researchers reported that the health-care sector is the most targeted sector in Canada amounting to a total of 48% of all security breaches in the country. Digital security of hospitals in Canada is being exposed to heavy risk as the growing number of data-breach incidents imply how the healthcare industry has become the new favorite of cybercriminals.

The issue has gained widespread attention that led to calls for imposing national cybersecurity standards on the healthcare industry. In order to tackle the problem effectively and protect the privacy of their patients, the institutions are required to update their cybersecurity arsenal for which the federal government’s involvement is deemed necessary by the experts.

While commenting on the matter, Paul-Émile Cloutier, the president and CEO of HealthcareCAN, said: “My biggest disappointment at this moment is that it seems that anything that has to do with the health sector and cybersecurity is falling between the cracks at the federal level.”

Cybersecurity experts expressed their concern in regard and put into perspective the current inability of the Canadian health system to cope up with the increasing risk.

Experts believe that information regarding a person’s health can potentially be of more value to the cybercrime space than credit card data itself for an individual’s health care identity contains data with unique values that remains the same over time such as the individual’s health number or DOB, it assists hackers in stealing identities by making the process smooth.

Over the past year, various Canadian health-care institutions became victim of breaches including LifeLabs, one of the country’s largest medical laboratory of diagnostic testing for healthcare, which was hit by a massive cyberattack compromising the health data of around 15 million Canadians. The private provider was forced to pay a ransom in order to retrieve the stolen customer data.

In another incident, attackers breached the computer networks of three hospitals in Ontario that led to a temporary shut down of diagnostic clinics and non-emergency cases were told to come back later.