When it comes to protecting our healthcare workers, most of the current discussion hinges on one phrase: PPE, or personal protective equipment.
This means medical facemasks, gloves, even little covers for shoes. The physical equipment is vital to keeping essential workers healthy and limiting the spread of COVID-19.
But there's a digital side to safety, too. And now more than ever, healthcare workers need it. Some of it is being offered for free.
Leave it to cybercriminals to profit from a crisis. And right now, they are targeting the same medical industry that could save their lives if they get seriously ill.
SecureWorld recently covered a credential harvesting phishing attack targeting medical workers:
"It's a phishing attack on medical professionals in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. You must click the link to join a 'mandatory' seminar on the coronavirus."
"And the point is to try to phish or capture the username and password of those working in hospitals."
Amid a crisis like this, how do we protect the digital lives of the people and organizations protecting our physical lives?
Luckily, there are some free options for the healthcare industry.
1. Volunteer cyber attack remediation and take-downs
Think about it like the Justice League in cyberspace.
A group of over 1,000 volunteers from the cybersecurity industry united by one purpose: to defend and stop cyberattacks against medical facilities.
SecureWorld covered the CTI League recently. This is what founder Ohad Zaidenberg says about the group:
"Since the coronavirus came out, I started to notice more and more hackers use this crisis to gain profit, and it made me so mad. It made me so angry because this is a game changer. This is not the time to attack. People can lose their life with all this activity.
So if someone is crazy enough and sick enough to use this coronavirus crisis to leverage it, to gain some profit, he needs to know that we are here to stop him. We are here to fight back. And I think that most of the people that joined our league, they have that emotion."
Listen to our podcast interview with the COVID-19 CTI League here:
2. Free Cyber Risk Analysis by Corvus Insurance
The first step to securing yourself is figuring out where the gaps are through a risk assessment.
Corvus Commercial Insurance is offering complimentary cyber risk analysis to healthcare entities, according to Insurance Business America:
"Healthcare organizations and first responders require stronger IT security now more than ever before, as more operations move online in an effort to reduce human interaction," said Philip Edmundson, CEO of Corvus Insurance. "Sadly, cyber criminals are hacking healthcare organizations more at this time knowing that resources and staff are stretched due to the pandemic. We want to do our part to strengthen the defenses of healthcare organizations during this time of crisis."
Sign up for this service here: Free Cyber Risk Analysis
3. Microsoft is offering a free security boost
Nearly all these attacks have two things in common: a person and an email. To target these risks directly, Microsoft is offering healthcare and human rights organizations free access to Account Guard, a service that watches for malicious activity via email.
This is what Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft, said about the initiative:
"Every patient deserves the best possible healthcare treatment, and we all need to thank and applaud the truly heroic work by those risking their own health to help those who are sick. Their work is challenging enough but is being made more difficult by cyberattacks, now or in the future."
Learn more about the effort here: Microsoft protecting healthcare and human rights organizations from cyberattacks.
Healthcare workers are putting their lives at risk to protect us. So it's really encouraging to see these kinds of efforts to protect them.