Healthcare DDoS Attacks: What You Need to Know to Best Protect Your Organization

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks continue to plague healthcare institutions, and like a virus, these threats continually evolve as they meet resistance against their intrusions. At the most basic level, a DDoS attack is when a target network is purposely overwhelmed with a large number of requests all at once, causing denial of service. Any organization that is Internet-facing is vulnerable to a DDoS attack.DDoS attacks are not merely an inconvenience. Financial agency Fitch Ratings warned that hospitals could face repercussions from successful cyberattacks following a spate of DDoS attacks last year. Over a dozen U.S. hospitals were targeted by a Russian hacktivist group, including Jefferson Health in Pennsylvania, and Atlanticare in New Jersey.