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Navigating the Current Cybersecurity Landscape R


on Pelletier, founder and chief customer officer at Pondurance, presented an Industry Partner Spotlight at Healthcare Innovation’s California


Summit on November 3 in Los Angeles, CA at the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. “When talking about healthcare, it’s important to


Ron Pelletier Founder & Chief Customer Officer


Pondurance


understand our attackers,” Pelletier said, kicking off the presentation. “What are the motivations? Why am I at risk?” He continued to explain that when thinking about


bad actors’ motivations behind cyberattacks, a lot of them are simply financially driven. “When we think about a healthcare record and how data rich it is, you can put together a complete identity from it, it makes a lot of sense as to why these records would be stolen,” he noted. Pelletier then brought up methods that bad actors use


to get their hands on records or infiltrate organizations’ networks. After making a quick joke about a show of hands to show how many people in the audience don’t enjoy doing a show of hands, he said, “Most everyone in this room has received a phishing email. That’s them [the bad actors] trying to get money. And it’s a really simple way of getting into a network and very frequently used, and honestly, fallen for.” Furthermore, Pelletier said, it doesn’t matter what


side an organization stands on issues like abortion or transgender care, there are so many hackers out there that they fall on both ends of the political spectrum. “You have to think about hacktivism in the real way


that the bad actors do,” he commented. “When I say ransomware is going to increase, it is like predicting yesterday’s weather, everyone knows this. I think that everyone knows that the strategy for the actor is to score a large sum of money by extorting ransomware across your enterprise. That’s a very real threat that individuals have to deal with. Organizations need to ensure that they are taking the best course of action to mitigate tis in the best way possible.” Pelletier added, “Now, an interesting fact is that we


actually saw a decrease rather than in increase in Q1 and Q2 of this year when the Ukraine and Russia conflict


really came into full cycle. These two groups used to work together, side by side, creating malfeasance on networks and extorting ransom, now all of a sudden there was a split. This can be attributed to the decrease in ransomware that we saw during those quarters.” Yet, Pelletier went onto explain that this decrease


didn’t last for long. He made an analogy to the scene in Fantasia where Mickey Mouse is splitting the broom- sticks and they keep on multiplying. This is what we’re seeing right now with ransomware, groups growing back in fast numbers. Pelletier also touched upon the topic of cyber


insurance. He said, “If you think about the evolution of cyber insurance and how it’s changing, the increase in ransomware directly correlates to what we’re seeing.” He went on to explain that, for example, five years ago policies couldn’t be written fast enough and it was a new hot business. Now, all of a sudden, this ransomware epi- demic happens, and since policies are paying out large sums of money, they just can’t stay in business or make a profit for themselves. “There have been [ransomware] negotiators busi-


nesses on the incident response side for a few years now,” he explained. “Their full-time position is to negoti- ate with ransomware actors in the insurance business. So, it’s something that is affecting the way we will do things in terms of securing ourselves and being able to trust the rest through the use of insurance. So, premiums are skyrocketing, and insurance companies are scrutiniz- ing a lot more with respect to whether or not they’re going to renew a policy.” Pelletier concluded, “Organizations really need to


be prepared and mitigate risks before they happen. Organizations need to say, ‘What do I need to do to pre- pare myself to make sure that we are, in fact, respond- ing to threats?’ When we start talking about prepara- tion, that really starts with going back to the basics in terms of risk analysis and risk management. I think a lot of organizations have done risk management to meet their requirements, like the HIPAA security rule, but organizations really need to understand the concepts surrounding incident response.”


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