DDoS attacks have grown over the years, but 2023 saw an “unforeseen” acceleration in their number and sophistication, according to the May 30 analyst note from HHS’ Office of Information Security and Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center.
These attacks differ from denial-of-service (or DoS) events in that they originate from multiple sources and send a larger amount of traffic into victim systems at once, making the hacks difficult to quickly spot and eradicate, HHS said. These cyber intrusions are inexpensive to pull off and have been increasingly helmed by politically motivated “hacktivists,” leading to attacks on critical infrastructure, including hospitals.
Hospitals can prevent DDoS attacks via infrastructure upgrades and redundancy, regular security audits and patch management, DDoS mitigation services, security information and event management (or SIEM) solutions, having an incident response plan, and monitoring traffic, the agency said.
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