Cybersecurity firms offer free support to healthcare organizations under attack

Leading cybersecurity firms unite to provide free support to the healthcare sector during the COVID-19 crisis by joining C5 Capital’s international Cyber Defense Alliance. Today, a number of leading cybersecurity experts have joined C5 Capital’s Cyber Alliance to Defend our Healthcare, as the number of cyber attacks facing the sector continues to rise.

C5 Capital, the specialist investment firm that exclusively invests in the secure data ecosystem, including cybersecurity, AI, cloud and space, has further strengthened the expertise and reach of The Cyber Alliance to Defend our Healthcare with a stream of new members joining.

The Alliance is now supported by industry leaders including ITC Secure, IronNet Cybersecurity, Haven Cyber Technologies, Enveil, 4iQ, Blue Cedar, Hazelcast, SAP NS2, Modex, Telos, OneVinn, TruSTAR, Privitar, Cynamics, The Global Cyber Centre by SOSA and Klaatu IT Security. Their combined experience and resources further enhances the Alliance’s powerful industry response to an unprecedented series of cyberattacks on a healthcare sector already under huge pressure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key figures from the cyber industry are also supporting the Alliance, including Ron and Cyndi Gula, founders of cybersecurity investment firm Gula Tech Adventures.

Since launching the Alliance in March to provide free support to healthcare organisations, C5 Capital has noted a ten-fold increase in cyberattacks, such as ransomware, on the sector, adding an additional threat to already-overburdened hospitals, clinics and research facilities.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently warned that more than 25,000 email addresses from its organisation and others related to its operations – such as the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US – had been compromised.

Through collective defense, members of the Alliance are working together to protect healthcare workers on the frontline of the epidemic. Much of the Alliance’s work to date has focused on the onboarding of critical healthcare infrastructure to the C5 IronDome, which uses behavioral intelligence derived from cyber anomalies to detect potential threats. Other activity has ranged from providing network compromise assessments and additional monitoring of core systems, to offering surge capacity to overwhelmed Security Operations Centers and providing Blockchain solutions to safeguard against ransomware attacks.

This work is helping to ensure hospitals and clinics protect their internal systems and databases for patients, healthcare workers and volunteers. It is also enabling pharmaceutical research and development facilities to safeguard their work while developing a vaccine to fight the COVID-19 virus both safely and efficiently.

Andre Pienaar, Founder, C5 Capital said: “The growing support for the Alliance underlines the strong collaborative nature of the cybersecurity sector. With many of the world’s leading cybersecurity experts now contributing their services and knowledge for free we have a powerful united front to combat cyber threats to global health organisations when they are already under immense strain as a result of this terrible pandemic.”

General (Ret) Keith Alexander, former Commander U.S. Cyber Command and current Co-CEO and Founder of IronNet Cybersecurity, said: “As the COVID-19 outbreak accelerates worldwide, threat adversaries are taking advantage of popular fears about the disease to spread malware that provides them access to sensitive personal and corporate data. We must come together as one — through Collective Defense — to protect and defend global healthcare providers. They represent the front line of this crisis; as cybersecurity experts, we must work together behind the scenes to ensure reliability and continuity of service.”

Ron Gula, Co-Founder of cybersecurity investment firm Gula Tech Adventures, added: “This industry coalition for health care providers is a powerful way to counteract the threat from hackers and nation states who are taking advantage of the COVID-19 crisis.”

Claes Kruse, CEO, OneVinn, said: “During these unprecedented times, we need to defend the real heroes of our time, the healthcare workers. We feel that it’s important that we, as a cybersecurity industry, do our best to keep their systems up and running, avoid attacks and let the true heroes continue to save our lives.”

Dr. Ellison Anne Williams, Founder and CEO of Enveil, commented: “Fighting this pandemic will require the meaningful use of data and resources from around the globe. Privacy Enhancing Technologies can uniquely protect the privacy and security of these sensitive data assets, and we look forward to working with the broader Alliance to ensure such technologies are a foundational part of any solution.”