As we covered in part one, there’s tremendous investment underway in healthcare IT and the industry is innovating every step along the way of patient care and records management, or it soon will be. And the result is that as hospitals grow more efficient and deliver care more effectively, it will help better contain healthcare cost increases. But it must be done securely.
In the past decade, we've witnessed amazing advancements in medicine. Our lives are being not only enhanced but extended as new treatments, medications, and technologies come to market every month. Still, it's not just medical abilities that are rapidly improving; it's also the technology that drives the management and delivery of healthcare. This includes everything from the technology now behind a simple visit to the doctor’s office, new healthcare devices, and monitoring technologies, to the electronic sharing of patient medical information among far-flung doctors and specialists.
Healthcare organizations are still looking for a cybersecurity cure or at the very least an effective security management regimen. As we covered recently, Healthcare continues to be a prime target for cyber attacks. That post was based on a survey conducted by the non-profit global advisory organization HIMSS and found that most healthcare organizations had experienced a significant security incident in the previous year.
The healthcare industry has been a major target for bad actors in recent years, who have inflicted heavy financial losses, reputational damage and risking patient health. Administrators have responded by bolstering cybersecurity budgets, security solution deployments, and awareness training. But much more needs to be done to stay on top of this constant threat, experts believe.
The healthcare sector has to store increasing quantities of personally identifiable and sensitive information, making it one of the most attractive targets for data theft. However, according to EY’s Global Information Security Survey 2018-2019, the sector’s awareness of cyber risks is growing, and many organizations are determined to put stronger protections in place.
Few industries today are faced with as many cyber security threats as the healthcare sector. Patient data is among the most sensitive information in the digital ecosystem, and cyber criminals are often looking to leverage these resources for profit.
Amid growing fears about cybercrime in healthcare, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released guidelines to healthcare organizations of all types and sizes, ranging from local clinics to large hospital systems.
Despite the risk of tremendous loss in a breach, healthcare providers (HCPs) are slow to build strong cybersecurity defenses around their business.
Despite regulatory mandates and years of costly data breaches in the healthcare industry, a recent survey found that less than one-third of healthcare organizations say they have a comprehensive cybersecurity program in place.
Phishing remains a key attack vector for bad actors to compromise not just individual user accounts, but also to establish a foothold in the entire infrastructure of a given organization. This is possible because attackers know one thing very well: a company’s first line of defense, its staff, is also its weakest security layer.
In May 2017, the WannaCry ransomware took copious amounts of data hostage and demanded hefty sums in exchange for the decryption keys. The contagion, allegedly the work of North Korean hackers, spread like wildfire, infecting countless systems worldwide and dealing billions of dollars in damages. Some victims ceded to the attackers’ demands, but few got their data back.
While industry reports claim ransomware attacks have dropped, cybersecurity insurance company Beazley Breach Response (BBR) Services has reported otherwise. According to businesses benefiting from its insurance deals, there has been a surge in the number of reported ransomware attacks, especially in September, when incidents nearly doubled from a month earlier.
