Unisys has announced it is supporting the CyberPeace Institute’s Cyber4Healthcare initiative, a program designed to offer free cybersecurity services to healthcare providers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. This follows a public call in May asking governments around the globe to join forces with the private sector and academia to ensure that medical facilities are protected from cyber threats.
As part of its support for the program, Unisys will be providing pro bono online consultations designed to help healthcare organizations address the following critical areas of cyber defense:
- How to minimize the effect of ransomware within an organization by leveraging proven strategies like Zero Trust and network architectures like microsegmentation;
- How to more safely extend cyber perimeters to include work-from-home (WFH) with better identity and encryption practices; and
- A “spot check” of current cyber risk based on an individual organization’s operational goals.
“The world is at a critical moment in time, as the security risks we all face and our reliance on internet connectivity has been magnified as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Tom Patterson, Unisys Chief Trust Officer. “We know that adversaries can attack our most critical infrastructures through the click of a single WFH employee. That’s why Unisys is proud to stand with government, industry and academic leaders around the world to safeguard patient data, testing information and intellectual property so that our medical workers on the frontline can focus on delivering care to patients in their hour of need.”
Cyber4Healthcare further calls for a stop to cyberattacks on hospitals, healthcare and medical research facilities, and for attackers to be held accountable with international law to be applied where possible.
Hospitals and healthcare organizations are increasingly under attack as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. INTERPOL recently warned that it has detected a significant increase in cyber-attacks against hospitals around the world that are engaged in the COVID-19 response. And a joint alert from the Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) warned of a rise in Coronavirus-related cyber campaigns that use malware and “password spraying” to target healthcare organizations, pharmaceutical companies, medical research organizations, local governments and academia.
