The following is a guest article by Sam Manjarres, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Identity Security at WatchGuard
The healthcare industry is increasingly in the crosshairs of cybercriminals. In 2022, as cyberattacks globally rose by 38% year-on-year, healthcare became the third-most-attacked industry (behind government and education), recording an increase of 74% and reporting up to 1,463 incidents per week. Unsurprisingly, a recent Gartner Peer Insights survey – Cybersecurity in the Healthcare Industry – also showed that nearly half of participating healthcare organizations have experienced a data breach in the past two years. As the number of connected and unmanaged healthcare devices increases, threats targeting Internet of Things (IoT), Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), and Operational Technology (OT) devices can undermine the confidence of patients in the ability of healthcare organizations – and the industry as a whole – to deliver high-quality care while protecting their safety.
What is most concerning about attacks on healthcare organizations is that any of the four most common types of attacks (ransomware, supply chain attacks, cloud or business email compromise) can trigger serious consequences for the health of patients, even putting their lives at risk. Yet, despite the stakes, many healthcare organizations aren’t as well-protected as they could be. For instance, only 24% of healthcare organizations have multi-factor authentication (MFA) policies in place, which is an essential component of a modern security strategy. So, what else can healthcare providers and leaders do to help prevent damaging data breaches and operational disruptions?
Use Secure Wi-Fi to Protect Connected Medical Devices
Healthcare IoT devices often rely on the same networks as general-purpose IT equipment, making them more susceptible to infection or attack. By setting up secure Wi-Fi hotspots, healthcare organizations can visualize crucial information such as signal strength coverage, wireless client bandwidth consumption, or hotspot usage. This makes it possible to identify potential threats and compromised devices by detecting anomalous traffic.
Implement Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Blockers to Defeat Ransomware
APT blockers analyze the behavior of suspicious files by sending them to a cloud-based sandbox to emulate, execute, and analyze their code. If a file is deemed malicious, this solution takes action to prevent the code from executing, thus protecting the network and digital assets.
Ensure PHI Compliance with VPN Tunnels
The HIPAA Privacy Rule has strong requirements around Protected Health Information (PHI). Creating drag-and-drop virtual private networks (VPNs) encrypts and anonymizes data, which can be effective when sharing patient electronic medical records (EMR) or during telemedicine scenarios. Policy-based firewall tunnels allow this traffic to pass into the corporate network safely.
Require MFA to Defeat Phishing
Human error is one of the biggest cybersecurity challenges. Attackers often use phishing attacks with malicious links or files to trick users into sharing their credentials and gain access to critical resources. In 2022, the number of stolen credentials available on the dark web was estimated to be more than 24 billion (and growing rapidly). However, implementing an MFA solution – which requires an additional layer of authentication – significantly reduces the danger of weak or stolen credentials.
Aside from the risk to the well-being of patients (which is the most important consideration), attacks on the healthcare industry carry significant financial ramifications. Since 2018, ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations alone have cost the global economy $92 billion in downtime. A recent IBM Security and Ponemon Institute report pegged the average cost of a data breach to a healthcare organization at $11 million, more than twice the cost of a breach across all industries.
Unfortunately, attackers continue to show little regard for the mayhem and real harm they might cause when disrupting a hospital system, clinic, or other healthcare institution, seeing only the potential windfall they might gain from holding data for ransom. With threat actors showing no signs of slowing down, healthcare organizations will continue to face major challenges if they don’t identify their vulnerabilities and improve their security postures from the ground up. Patients need the peace of mind that their health and their data are both safe.
