An article on the Healthcare IT News website urged healthcare facilities to prepare for ransomware 2.0.

The next wave of attacks are expected to target the underprotected Internet of Things and medical devices.

“The latest variation on a theme regarding this threat is what can appropriately be called a ransomworm,” Rich Curtiss, managing consultant at Clearwater Compliance, a former hospital CIO, and liaison for cybersecurity vulnerability projects with the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, said in the article. “This is a combination of two types of malware, ransomware and a worm. While we have become all too familiar with ransomware in the healthcare sector, we have ignored other forms of malware.”

“Healthcare security practitioners do not have authority or control over the medical or biomedical equipment that usually is vendor-managed,” Curtiss said.

Read the article.