Israeli health system contends with 100,000 cyber attacks a month

The attackers have been identified as the cybercrime group known as DeepBlueMagic, which has emerged to global awareness only in recent months.

By Aryeh Savir/TPS

Israel’s health system faces some 100,000 attacks on a monthly basis, a senior cyber defense official revealed during a discussion on the issue at the Knesset on Monday.

The Knesset’s Health Committee held a discussion following the ransom cyberattack on Hillel Yaffe Medical Center’s computer system in October, which crippled the hospital’s digital systems.

The National Cyber Directorate (NCD) deployed staff and equipment to restore the hospital’s computer systems to full function, and the hospital took several days to fully recover.

The attackers have been identified as the cybercrime group known as DeepBlueMagic, which has emerged to global awareness only in recent months. The motive was economic.

Reuven Eliyahu, chief technology officer at the Ministry of Health, addressed the issue of cyberattacks and said it is “a kind of third world war. If once a country needed a lot of money, planes, ships and missiles, today a simple website is enough and you can attack. The number of attackers is much larger than the defenders and this is an intensifying issue.”

“We encounter over 100,000 cyberattacks a month on health organizations and stop them. Some are simple and some are more sophisticated,” he added.

In response, the health system is taking steps to “raise the walls of cyber defense of health organizations” with the aim of reducing the areas of attack on health organizations is formulating a series of basic regulations for cyber defense in the health system.