Tag Archives: cybersecurity

Cybersecurity: an EU health challenge in the post-Covid era

In September 2020, during the pandemic, the German press reported the first death due to a cyber attack on the Hospital of Düsseldorf University, which caused great disturbance such as postponement of surgeries, and scheduled medical examinations or chemotherapies. Cybercriminals by using malicious software, so called ransomware, invaded 30 servers of the hospital, crashed the system and forced the staff to turn away patients treated in emergency. A female patient was sent to Wuppertal 35 km away and eventually died due to treatment delay. Nearly a year earlier, Campbell County Health, a medical group in Wyoming USA, with 20 clinics across the state, had also been target for cybercriminals. Read more [...]

Designing antivirus for nuclear power plants to fend off cyber-terrorism

In 2008, it was the first time that a software virus replicating the automatic process control system of a nuclear facility was recorded. In this opinion piece, Anastasia Tolstaya, an engineer at the Institute for Cyber-Intelligence Systems, Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, in the Russian Federation, explores what can be done to prevent exposing the safety of nuclear plants, in the case of a cyber attack. Finding solutions, she argues, is not trivial. Read more [...]