By By Dan Hounsell

Healthcare IT managers increasingly find their companies’ email systems in the cross-hairs of hackers. A Dallas-based laboratory testing provider recently notified 39,213 patients that an unauthorized party gained access to two of its email accounts. And Covenant HealthCare recently announced that an unauthorized individual gained access to two employees' email accounts, potentially exposing about 45,000 patients' information. 

Now, the FBI is warning private-sector entities that cybercriminals are increasingly leveraging business email compromise (BEC) attacks against federal government agencies, according to Health IT Security. The latest FBI IC3 Internet Crime Report showed BEC attacks are the costliest cybercrime under the current threat landscape. In 2020 alone, 19,369 BEC complaints were received by the FBI and led to about $1.8 billion in damages.