We have crossed the mainstream threshold of an entirely new attack on the information collected by hospitals and healthcare facilities: ransomware attacks. There is currently no bigger buzzword in the health security sector than that — "ransomware."

According to a recent report by Healthcare IT News, a majority of hospitals in the U.S. have been the target of a ransomware attack or could potentially become a victim. The "could potentially become" a victim language is pretty loose — like saying everyone who plays the lottery "could potentially become" a winner of the jackpot — but the point has been made, and people are taking notice.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is seeking more information from the FBI on ransomware attacks on hospitals. In a recent letter, Boxer asked FBI Director James Comey for information about how the agency is investigating the recent attacks on hospitals in California, the District of Columbia and around the country.

"I am concerned that by hospitals paying these ransoms, we are creating a perverse incentive for hackers to continue these dangerous attacks," she wrote.

For the record, a ransomware attacks holds files hostage, and hackers demand a sum of money to unlock the information.

San Diego-based Alvarado Hospital Medical Center reportedly had a "malware disruption" earlier this month. The computer systems were recovered without having to pay a ransom, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

According to Health IT Security, Alvarado is also part of Prime Healthcare, which recently saw two of its California facilities suffer potential ransomware attacks. Both Chino Valley Medical Center and Desert Valley Hospital in Victorville reported earlier this month that even with the ransomware attacks, patient data was not compromised and their facilities remained functional.

Kings Daughters Health, an Indiana hospital, also reported that it had suffered a recent ransomware attack. Earlier this year, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, also in California, was the victim of a ransomware attack and paid the $17,000 ransom in bitcoins for the release of its records.

"More than half of hospitals responding to the poll said they experienced a ransomware attack in the last year, and 25 percent said they were not sure if they had been attacked or did not have a way of knowing if such an attack occurred," Healthcare IT News reports.

About 73 percent of the hospitals in the Healthcare IT News/HIMSS poll said they had a business plan in place to address a ransomware event. Another 23 percent said they did not have such a plan in place, and 3 percent said they were unsure if they did.

But do these plans do much to protect hospital's information, or are these plans lips service to the community to say they are protected in the case of breach?

According to NetworkWorld, "ransomware has been around for a long time, but we've never seen a concerted manual effort by hackers to break into a network, hang out for a year, spread to all the machines and then install it everywhere."

The move is being called a major shift in hacking effort and is certainly going to increase as we move ahead.