Introduction
5 Reasons Healthcare Cybersecurity Is Crucial
Healthcare cybersecurity has never been more important. With cybersecurity attacks rising in both frequency and severity in recent years — catalyzed by the Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing geopolitical instability — it has never been more crucial for the most sensitive and susceptible organizations to protect themselves. And there is no organization more sensitive, or more routinely targeted, than those in the healthcare industry.
Healthcare staff work long hours during incredibly demanding days and simply don't have the time or resources to understand the full scope of risks they face by not being proactive about healthcare cybersecurity. They're far too busy saving lives to worry about how current their network's firewall is, whether their endpoints are secured, or if their antivirus software is up to date. Yet the reality is that patient data is extremely valuable on the dark web, and the outdated hardware and software that many healthcare organizations have fostered long-term dependencies on leave them dangerously vulnerable to exploitation.
As more healthcare leaders realize the magnitude of these threats, the more they're investing their time and allocating their budget to shore up their defenses. From ransomware attacks that hold patient records hostage to unsecured medical devices that create backdoors into critical networks, the attack surface for healthcare organizations continues to expand. Read on to learn five compelling reasons why healthcare cybersecurity is becoming more important every single day — and what your organization can do about it.
Healthcare workers are among the busiest and most in-demand professionals anywhere in the world, and their all-consuming patient care is understandably more pressing than staying up-to-date with healthcare cybersecurity best practices. More than anything, they need reliable, intuitive technology that allows them to treat patients as efficiently as possible. Fortunately, bolstering your cyber defenses does not have to be a disruptive, all-hands-on-deck overhaul. Healthcare leaders should start by assessing the impact of any cybersecurity measures they want to implement and align those measures with existing software and hardware as much as reasonably possible.
There is a bevy of solutions like increased endpoint security and multi-factor authentication that work with healthcare organizations' most common platforms, like Office 365, so that you can better secure your information without costing your staff more precious time. Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions, for example, can authorize users to access multiple applications with one set of credentials, allowing you to increase your cybersecurity without creating more work for your team. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare staff needed the ability to access data remotely. Now the reliance on remote access is greater than ever, and that continual, off-site access presents new opportunities for bad actors to exploit.
In the seedy underbelly of the internet, your patient data can fetch a pretty penny — and hackers know it. That's why healthcare organizations are so frequently targeted. Ransomware attacks, the most common form of a cybersecurity attack, either threaten to publish an organization's data or perpetually block access to it unless a ransom is paid. Hackers will often hold this data hostage two to three consecutive times before relinquishing control: once as a traditional ransom, again to prevent information from being released to the public, and then one last time so that victims can find out how they were hacked in the first place. Hospitals and healthcare facilities store an incredible amount of confidential data that they are legally required to protect with baseline cybersecurity measures. If those securities aren't in place, healthcare organizations could face tremendous financial losses for not cooperating with the HIPAA Privacy Law — in addition to the financial loss incurred from having to buy the stolen data back from their attackers.
<h2><strong>Outdated Medical Devices and Accessible Data Create a Vast Attack Surface</strong></h2>
Healthcare technology has advanced in inspiring ways in recent years, but for all of their dramatic leaps forward in actual healthcare provision, these innovations often create side doors or back doors for hackers to access your network. Devices like heart rate monitors, for example, aren't designed with online security in mind, and even though they don't contain patient data themselves, they can be used as leverage to launch a larger attack on a server that does contain sensitive information. Every healthcare organization has budgetary constraints, and medical devices are often going to be the priority — which means other medical technologies, like computers and software platforms, become increasingly outdated and fail to keep up with contemporary attacks.
Technologies eventually reach their end-of-lifecycle where their vendors are no longer routinely providing updates, which often contain critical bug fixes to keep systems secure. It's possible to minimize the risk of cyberattacks by adding extra layers of security protection and slightly extending their lifecycle, but eventually, you'll need to migrate to a more modern platform to ensure your healthcare organization is truly safe. At the end of the day, it's the healthcare organization that is ultimately responsible for protecting patient data at all times — and that means staying current with today's threats as well as today's defenses.
Compounding this challenge is the reality that extremely confidential patient data needs to be accessible both remotely and on-site from multiple devices at any given time. What allows healthcare staff to access critical data as quickly as possible also creates opportunities for security vulnerabilities that hackers are eager to exploit. Endpoints are a particular weak spot: even if the platforms or applications being accessed are secured, often the devices — phones, personal computers, and more — being used to access them are not. Modern healthcare organizations handle large quantities of patient data and an extensive network of connected medical devices. Larger organizations typically manage thousands of medical devices connected to their networks, each one posing a potential security risk. Solutions like increased endpoint security and multi-factor authentication can go a long way in proactively protecting you from these inevitable vulnerabilities without slowing down your staff or limiting their access.
Healthcare professionals are medical experts — not IT professionals — and healthcare cybersecurity solutions can be extremely complex. The reality is that frontline staff are far too busy to educate themselves on the latest threats and best practices, meaning the responsibility falls squarely on IT specialists to ensure that healthcare staff is protected from both external attackers and their own inadvertent actions. These attacks can be caused by unprotected email, weak security, outdated antivirus software, uneducated staff members, lack of security policies, or any number of other common reasons — all of which underscore the critical need for comprehensive, user-friendly security frameworks.
Healthcare professionals also need to be able to manage their own devices to a reasonable extent, freeing up IT specialists to deal with broader IT and security issues within the network. Some MFA solutions offer a self-service portal, which allows users to reset security PINs and more by themselves, helping to lighten the workload on the support desk. Any solution that can save both time and money by automatically regulating user permissions without putting sensitive patient data at risk is a must-have for healthcare cybersecurity. MFA solutions prevent attacks from compromised credentials or unauthorized users, ensuring only the right people can access private information.
Hospital staff need secure devices and networks that are quick and easy to access — plain and simple. Additional measures like MFA and SSO are becoming increasingly common thanks to their ability to fortify online defenses without impeding the end users. Connecting to unsecured networks from a home office or public space can put your entire organization at risk, which is why solutions like increased endpoint security and multi-factor authentication are no longer optional but essential. By investing in intuitive, scalable cybersecurity tools and pairing them with ongoing staff awareness initiatives, healthcare organizations can dramatically reduce their exposure to today's most prevalent threats.
The Takeaway for IT Buyers
While all healthcare organizations are at risk of cyberattack, smaller enterprises with smaller security budgets are often targeted specifically for their reputation of having less sophisticated and up-to-date healthcare cybersecurity measures in place. The threats are real, they are growing, and they affect organizations of every size — from local clinics to sprawling hospital networks.
No matter your size, effective cybersecurity is an absolute must for healthcare organizations, as they are all responsible for safeguarding sensitive patient data. Healthcare leaders are becoming more aware of the need to increase spending on cybersecurity, and there are plenty of solutions out there that are scalable to different business sizes and budgets. From SSO and MFA to endpoint security and modern platform migrations, the tools to protect your organization exist today — the key is implementing them strategically and proactively.
Don't wait until your organization becomes the next target. Reach out to Derive Technologies to learn more about how we can protect you from the threats of today and tomorrow. Our team of experts is ready to assess your current cybersecurity posture and deliver tailored solutions that keep your patients' data safe and your staff focused on what they do best — saving lives. BOOK A FREE CONSULTATION