Cyber ​​Criminal focuses sights on medical data

- Cyber ​​criminals have extended their work in recent years of data stolen financial account information to medical records. It is not just about business sensitive information from biotech and pharmaceutical companies, but also patient data. This enables Intel Security in a report.

The researchers encountered during their study of more cyber criminals who tried to recruit healthcare professionals with access to confidential information from online advertising and social media.

The information that the criminals aces concerns so-called non-perishable information. While debit cards and credit cards can be canceled and replaced fairly simple, it does not apply to health information. This applies for instance to names, someone's mother's maiden name, information about social security or pension insurance data and old addresses of patients, but also to the medical history of people.

character Assassination

Cybercriminals analyze these data and check with other stolen data to drive eg fraud trying to detect. The data is sold, or is it extorted or fraud and it is character assassination carried along in some cases.

But also information on the next generation of drugs, results of research into medicines and other sensitive business information can be quite valuable. Therefore also pharmaceutical companies and their partners or even supervisors involved in the introduction of new drugs on the market has become an increasingly interesting target for cybercriminals.