Your medical records might’ve just been stolen in this scary security breach

The DarkSide Russian ransomware gang that found itself thrust into the spotlight in recent days over its hack of Colonial Pipeline, a major US fuel pipeline operator, apparently considers its affiliated hackers as marginally less evil than competitors -- due to DarkSide's refusal to hack entities like hospitals.

That doesn't mean other ransomware attackers, however, are quite as principled. In fact, the health care industry represents a pretty juicy target for such cybersecurity villains, thanks to at least two highly attractive traits associated with health care enterprises: The records they store on patients are highly sensitive (i.e., potentially very valuable), and health care systems cannot tolerate any network downtime whatsoever. Bingo -- that represents a target that would presumably be more than willing to pay up following a ransomware attack.