Pharmacy Daily | Cybercrime rising as it targets health

EVERY six minutes a cybercrime is reported to the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) with the healthcare industry in the top five sectors targeted in Australia.

Reminding pharmacy owners of the risk, National Australia Bank experts told Pharmacy Daily at a webinar yesterday, that cyber-security threats were on the rise, particularly ransomware attacks and compromised business emails.

According to NAB Economic research, more than two in 10 health service businesses have already suffered a cyber attack, with malware attacks (38%) and ransomware attacks (38%) being the most common issues, with Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) being most at risk.

Last financial year, ASD stated that cyber crimes cost SMEs an average of $71,600, according to its latest research, with incidents surging by as much as 23%.

Speaking at the NAB webinar, Tessa Bowles, the bank's Security Advisory and Awareness Senior Consultant, emphasised the importance of enabling multi-factor authentication and verifying invoices and payment requests before making payments.

While NAB Health's Specialised Business Bank Executive, John Avent, discussed the growing concern of deepfakes and the need to implement the Australian Cyber Security Centre's Essential Eight steps that can reduce the risk of cybercrime in pharmacies.

Bowles provided useful insights into identifying phishing emails and protecting personal information, including red flags such as lack of personalisation and spotting suspicious email addresses.

They also discussed how to analyse an audio transcript and identify phishing scams.

While the impact of cyber attacks is usually measured in time and money lost, NAB Cyber Insights Report 2023 also showed it can profoundly impact mental and emotional wellbeing.

This can manifest in several ways, such as emotional stress from stolen data and concern about how the data may be used, feelings of shame and guilt for not being cautious enough, a sense of helplessness, and loss of trust, autonomy and control.

When asked to identify the biggest impact from a cyber attack outside of money, almost four in 10 Australians pointed to feelings of anxiety, fear, stress, or frustration.

Around three in 10 had feelings of intense outrage and anger, and one in four had feelings of helplessness and feeling that they were likely to be the victim of future cybercrime.

Bowles' top tip was to use a password manager to generate and store unique passwords for various applications as well as implement awareness programs and processes to educate pharmacy employees on cyber security best practices, such as password hygiene and email phishing detection. JG