GlobalData : US government should ramp up its cybersecurity defenses to counter cyberattacks, says GlobalData

06 Apr 2022
US government should ramp up its cybersecurity defenses to counter cyberattacks, says GlobalData Posted in Medical Devices

With the government and its services considered to be the backbone of the US, it is vital that they protect an institution's uninterruptible power supply (UPS), which have recently become the target of threat actors, says GlobalData. The leading data and analytics company notes that the recent and worrying rise in cyberattacks could be detrimental to the country's healthcare services if the government does not ramp up its cybersecurity defenses.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and FBI sent out a warning to government hospitals and other facilities informing of a trend with threat actors targeting an institution's UPS.

James Spencer, Data Scientist at GlobalData, comments: "UPSs are meant to provide emergency power to an institution when normal supplies might fail-think of them as a backup. In recent years, however, UPSs have started to include internet connections for convenience. This allows for convenient functions such as power monitoring, maintenance alerts, and worryingly, security backdoors. This, in addition to normal ransomware attacks, has stricken private and public sector entities and interfered with the delivery of healthcare services in the US."

When taken in context with earlier advisories by the US government to 'batten down the hatches' cybersecurity-wise due to rampant cyberwarfare spreading throughout the world wide web from Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, one sees a worrying trend.

Spencer continues: "In years to come, as government agencies become lenient with changing their passwords from the default setting, we could see an increase in the number of cyberattacks, and a concomitant decrease in a government's ability to provide critical services such as healthcare. If UPSs are hacked, then a hospital can lose any access to backup power, which can have potentially life-threatening consequences in situations where power is not guaranteed. Furthermore, if one device on a network becomes infected, it is easy to spread within that same network."