IT Solutions Technology Blog

The FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned Wednesday that cybercriminals were stepping up ransomware attacks on health sector groups as the organizations grappled with a new wave of COVID-19 cases. The virus was also involved in an attack on Pennsylvania-headquartered hospital chain Universal Health Services, with all 250 of its U.S. healthcare facilities negatively impacted by a ransomware attack earlier this month

Network Best Practices

Patch operating systems software and firmware as soon as manufacturers release updates

Check configurations for every operating system version for Healthcare and Public Health Sector (HPH) organization owned assets to prevent issues from arising that local users are unable to fix due to having local administration disabled

Regularly change passwords to network systems and accounts and avoid reusing passwords for different accounts

Use multi-factor authentication where possible

Disable unused remote access/Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) ports and monitor remote access/RDP logs

Implement application and remote access allow listing to only allow systems to execute programs known and permitted by the established security policy

Audit user accounts with administrative privileges and configure access controls with least privilege in mind

Audit logs to ensure new accounts are legitimate

Scan for open or listening ports and mediate those that are not needed

Identify critical assets; create backups of these systems and house the backups offline from the network

Implement network segmentation

Sensitive data should not reside on the same server and network segment as the email environment

Set antivirus and anti-malware solutions to automatically update; conduct regular scans