Swiss healthcare sector particularly hard hit by ransomware attacks

In terms of global cyberattacks, Check Point's cyber forensics experts recorded a 28 percent increase compared to the same quarter last year - and a five percent increase in the healthcare sector, by the way. In Germany, there was an increase of 27 percent, in Austria of 15 percent. Switzerland suffered the greatest increase in attacks, with a rise of 76 percent.

Check Point points out some general tips on this:

• Employee trainings: Phishing emails are one of the most popular methods of ransomware distribution. By tricking a user into clicking a link or opening a malicious attachment, cyber criminals can gain access to an employee's computer and start installing and executing the ransomware program.
• Make sure software is up to date: Ransomware attackers find entry points in legacy applications and software, notice vulnerabilities and exploit them. If you want to use patches without downtime, you need a patch management strategy and you need to ensure that all employees are always up to date with the latest information.
• Endpoint protection: With real-time threat intelligence, these tools can protect against zero-day phishing campaigns and use URL filters to block access to malicious websites from any browser.
• Anti-ransomware protection: Anti-ransomware technology can detect signs of ransomware and notice anomalies in the network. In addition, unexplored malware families can be detected by using behavioral analysis and generic rules.
• Use of email security solutions: Modern email filtering solutions can protect against malware and other malicious payloads in emails.
• Prevention over detection: Attacks can not only be blocked, but also prevented, including zero-day attacks and unknown malware. With the right technologies, most attacks can be stopped before they penetrate.

Source: Check Point Software