Stegoloader Malware Sneak Attack Hits California Healthcare Providers

Stegoloader Malware Targeting Healthcare Providers Throughout California—Is Your Practice Safe?

There have been number of reports about how stegoloader malware is being used to target healthcare providers across North America, which is increasingly becoming a cause for concern for many practitioners.

Why? Stegoloader malware is the latest and most disastrous version of TROJ_GATAK, (the strain of trojans which use steganography to evade detection) and is sophisticated enough to conceal itself and often slips by undetected because of this ability.

Stegoloader Trojan Infection Count Per Industry

In order to avoid becoming an easy target many healtcare providers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area are choosing to partner up with seasoned IT support teams who have the security skills necessary to protect them against the latest generation of advanced malware.

Read on if you work in healthcare, deal with PHI, and want to learn more about how to keep your organization safe.

Just What Is Stegoloader Malware?

Stegoloader is advanced malware that utilizes digital steganography by hiding within a Portable Network Graphic (PNG) hosted on a valid website. Once this malware is accidentally accessed, it remains on the computer, lurking in the background, often evading detection.

It should be noted that the malware is so sophisticated that when it detects security or analysis tools running on the infected system, it will suspend its main program code, allowing it to stay hidden. Furthermore, it has been designed to ‘look’ for reverse engineering tools and terminate them, making it difficult for providers to regain control of their computer systems even when a security threat has been identified.

North American Healthcare Providers Targeted

A report carried out by Trend Micro found that North American healthcare providers were by far the greatest targets and experienced the heaviest impact as they became infected with the Stegoloader Trojan.

It increasingly appears that cyber criminals are becoming more interested in stealing healthcare information than even credit card information (PCI) since protected health (PHI) information has been fetching higher prices on the black market. This puts healthcare providers in a vulnerable position as their system security may have been breached without them even being aware of it.

Keeping Your Organization Safe

Stegoloader malware is impacting healthcare providers across North America. Up until they experienced a breach directly, many of these organizations remained complacent as business operations demanded full attention and the priority of planning IT security was set aside.

Don’t make the same mistake by assuming you have the adequate security measures in place. If you are concerned that your healthcare practice may have already been targeted, or want to prevent your system security from being infiltrated, get started with a free network assessment today.

Leverage the wealth of experience of our strategically-minded IT support services team, and implement the right technological solutions for your office to help prevent your organization from falling vicitm to a healthcare data security breach.

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