Cyber-physical systems (CPS) security company Claroty has announced the acquisition of healthcare IoT security business Medigate. 

In a statement released January 10, Claroty said the deal would allow it to secure the Extended Internet of Things (XIoT) “by delivering unmatched visibility, protection, and threat detection for all connected organizations via one comprehensive solution.”

Medigate, which is headquartered in New York’s Brooklyn borough, is known for creating the first security platform dedicated to healthcare IoT. 

The company was founded in the summer of 2017 by Jonathan Langer, Itay Kirshenbaum, and Pini Pinhasov. Langer serves as the company’s CEO, while Israel-based Kirshenbaum and Pinhasov fulfill the roles of vice president of research and development and vice president of product, respectively.

Since its creation, Medigate has scooped more than 40 industry awards, including the 2021 Best in KLAS for Healthcare IoT Security, the SINET Innovator Award, and Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company Award. It has also been listed in Forbes’ Top 20 IoT Start-Ups to Watch.

“By joining forces between Medigate and Claroty, we are forming the only cybersecurity company that can deliver a best-of-breed solution for all the critical assets across healthcare, industrial, and enterprise environments that comprise the XIoT,” said Langer.

He added: “Our combined talent, technology, and IP empowers us to truly change the way organizations identify, secure, and manage these connected assets on a massive scale, thereby delivering even greater value for our customers.”

Yaniv Vardi, CEO of Claroty, said that Medigate’s team and capabilities would play a key role in Claroty’s vision of a future “where cyber and physical worlds safely connect to support our lives.”

“Highly interconnected CPS have become pervasive in industrial and healthcare environments in recent years in order to drive innovation, resilience, sustainability, and better health outcomes. However, greater connectivity begets greater exposure to risks, with serious consequences for patient safety, public safety, and the environment,” said Vardi.

He added: “Together, Claroty and Medigate will combine our deep domain expertise and specialized technologies into a comprehensive platform that will extend across all types of CPS and connected devices to secure the XIoT.”

The protected health information (PHI) of thousands of individuals may have been exposed in a hacking incident at a healthcare information management company based in Georgia.

Clinical or treatment information and Social Security numbers were among the sensitive data compromised during a successful cyber-attack on Ciox Health that took place last summer.

Ciox Health, which is headquartered in Alpharetta, provides a variety of services, including information release, medical record retrieval, and health information management to more than 30 healthcare providers.

According to a notice recently issued by Ciox Health, an unauthorized person accessed the email account of a Ciox employee between June 24, 2021, and July 2, 2021. 

The company warned that the threat actor may have used that access to download emails and attachments associated with the compromised account.

“Ciox reviewed the account’s contents to determine whether sensitive information was contained in the account,” said the notice. 

“On September 24, 2021, Ciox learned that some emails and attachments in the employee’s email account contained limited patient information related to Ciox billing inquiries and/or other customer service requests.”

Information that the attacker may have accessed included patient names, provider names, dates of birth, and/or dates of service. Social Security numbers or driver’s license numbers, health insurance information, and/or clinical or treatment information was also exposed in what Ciox described as “very limited instances.”

The data breach was reported to the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights on December 30 as a hacking/IT incident impacting 12,493 individuals. 

Ciox Health said it began notifying its healthcare provider customers of the security incident on November 23. The security notice published on Ciox Health’s website was issued on behalf of 32 different healthcare providers, including Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Indiana University Health, Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center Health System, and Sarasota County Public Hospital District d/b/a Sarasota Memorial Health Care System.

“To help prevent something like this from happening again, we have and will continue to identify opportunities to implement additional procedures to further strengthen our email security, including by providing enhanced cybersecurity training to our employees,” stated Ciox Health.

The FBI, CISA, and the NSA have warned those in charge of the United States’ critical infrastructure network to prepare themselves against cyber-attacks originating in Russia.

In a joint advisory issued January 11, the three agencies provided an overview of Russian state-sponsored cyber-operations; commonly observed tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs); detection actions; incident response guidance; and mitigations. 

The agencies shared attack vectors that have been favored by Russian-based cyber-criminals in the past and urged the cybersecurity community to “adopt a heightened state of awareness and to conduct proactive threat hunting.”

Tactics cited in the advisory include spear phishing, brute force, exploiting known vulnerabilities, compromising third-party software, and developing and deploying custom malware.

“Russian state-sponsored APT actors have used sophisticated cyber-capabilities to target a variety of US and international critical infrastructure organizations, including those in the Defense Industrial Base as well as the Healthcare and Public Health, Energy, Telecommunications, and Government Facilities Sectors,” the joint advisory reads.

The warning came as no surprise to Vectra CTO and technical director Tim Wade. 

He told Infosecurity Magazine: “I can’t recall a time in my life when Russia wasn’t aggressively probing Western resolve, ranging from tactical incursions into air space to pulling strategic economic levers.

“This activity is just a continuation of that longstanding tradition, and I read this advisory as another periodic reminder of the background radiation of global politics – if you’re operating critical infrastructure and are under the impression that you aren’t squarely in an operator’s crosshairs, you’re wrong.”

John Bambenek, principal threat hunter at Netenrich, was similarly insouciant about the latest cybersecurity alert to be issued by the Biden administration.

“Advisories like this do little to help defenders actually protect themselves,” he said. “I read this and don’t have any more insight into detecting and preventing these attacks than before.”

Bambenek called for the NSA, FBI, and CISA to take a different and more direct approach to help America’s critical infrastructure defend against cyber-threats.

“It’s 2022,” he said. “These agencies hopefully can reach directly out to organizations with more-specific guidance, because public announcements aren’t helpful and there are reasons not to be too specific in them as well.”

Cybersecurity was once again identified as a major short and medium-term threat to the world in this year’s World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) The Global Risk Report. The analysis was based on insights from nearly 1000 global experts and leaders who responded to the WEF’s Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, environmental issues like climate action failure and extreme weather ranked highest on the risks facing the world over the short (0-2 years), medium (2-5 years) and long-term (5-10 years). In addition, a number of challenges exacerbated by the pandemic, such as livelihood crises, infectious diseases and mental health deterioration, also scored highly. Overall, this added up to a pessimistic assessment, with 84.2% of respondents stating they were either “worried” or “concerned” about the global outlook.

Digital challenges, such as “cybersecurity failures,” were also viewed as a significant and growing problem to the world. Nearly one in five (19.5%) respondents believe cybersecurity failures will be a critical threat to the world in just the next 0-2 years, and 14.6% said it would be in 2-5 years.

Interestingly, cybersecurity failures didn’t score as highly as a long-term risk. Reflecting on this, the report stated: “This suggests lower relevance to respondents – or a blind spot in perceptions given the potential damage of cyber-risks – compared to economic, societal and environmental concerns.”

Cybersecurity failures also ranked seventh (12.4%) in the risks that have worsened since the start of COVID-19, reflecting how increased reliance on digital technologies has created more opportunities for cyber-threat actors to strike.  

During a WEF press conference launching the report, Carolina Klint, risk management leader, Continental Europe, of Marsh, highlighted cybersecurity as a particularly grave business threat. She noted that the intensification of attacks over recent years means “that cyber-threats are now growing faster than our ability to prevent and manage them effectively.”

The pandemic has offered new opportunities for cyber-criminals to strike, with businesses forced to digitize and adopt new automation technologies rapidly. “Too often this has been built on the back of aging technology, which has led to supply chain disruption and greater exposure to cyber-attacks,” added Klint.

She also noted that the financial costs of cyber-attacks, such as ransomware, have surged in recent years. For example, the report cited data showing a four-fold rise in the total cryptocurrency value received by ransomware addresses last year, reaching $406.34m. In addition, Klint observed that “in 2021, we saw the highest average cost of a data breach in almost two decades.”

Overall, Klint identified four main cyber-risks that need to be tackled over the coming years. These are critical infrastructure failures, an increasingly aggressive regulatory environment, unprecedented identity theft and the failure to execute digital transformation effectively. She warned: “Companies soon won’t be able to claim good ESG credentials without addressing these key areas.”

To address these cyber challenges and more, companies must enhance their resiliency, “which is a journey, not a destination.” These efforts must not only focus on their own internal assets, “but also the vulnerabilities of those in their supply chain.”

In the GRPS survey, the respondents had a dim view of current cyber-threat mitigation efforts. Close to three-quarters (73%) said international risk mitigation efforts in the area of cross-border cyber-attacks and misinformation had either not started or are in early development. The Global Risk Report warned of severe consequences if international cooperation in this area is not improved. This includes the potential for open cyber warfare as governments continue to retaliate against perpetrators and growing “mistrust between societies, business and government.”