By Zak Sonntag | [email protected]

Cybercriminals struck a Holladay-based medical data company and stole $259,000 that police say is unlikely to be recaptured, according to a Holladay precinct quarterly police report made public in February. The cybercriminals obtained the medical company’s bank routing information after hacking the server of a trusted vender, located in Scottsdale, Arizona, then posed as the vender to solicit the company’s account numbers. The company asked not to be identified.

Detectives with the Unified Police Department (UPD) conducted an “email header analysis” and traced the source of the criminal attack to the African country of Nigeria. Because the origin of attack is outside United States jurisdiction, the losses are unlikely to be recouped, according to Holladay precinct Police Chief Justin Hoyal.

The attack comes as cybercrime is growing across the country, with experts estimating the costs to the public and private sectors has risen to over $400 billion a year.

The health care industry is disproportionately targeted, according to CSO Online. Most hacks fall under the category of “spear-phishing,” a tactic in which malware and ransomware viruses are embedded as links in an email. Many of the most high profile hacks originated as phishing attacks. In 2016, hackers obtained the banking information of the employees at the University of Kansas by phishing. Later, that same year, hackers obtained access to the email account of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign manager John Podesta.

The highly integrated use of data and the increase of data sharing across platforms is central to the modern economy and has delivered greater efficiency and seamlessness to commerce and our daily lives. Yet that integration is also what makes us vulnerable to cybercriminals. As data sharing technologies become more indispensable to daily life, the field of cybersecurity has its work cut out.