The healthcare industry prefers to focus on routine and maintenance through regular check-ups and preventative care to avoid major health issues as opposed to dealing with emergencies for their patients. The industry’s approach to cybersecurity should be no different. However, an article by Healthcare IT News highlights the reasons why cybersecurity is such a challenge for the healthcare industry.
One major challenge is that personal health information is not centrally located for patients. Your personal health data is stored in multiple systems: doctors’ offices, hospitals, urgent care facilities, pharmacies and/or insurance companies. This data is constantly developing and changing, all while being pulled from multiple sources. Along with health information, the patient’s financial information is intertwined. This adds a level of sensitivity to all of the data.
Another challenge for the industry is the evolving technology that is being used across all forms of care. Similar to servers and networks, Healthcare’s IoT equipped devices can be hacked, which can prove to be catastrophic. As these enhanced technologies continue to infiltrate healthcare services, the exposures and risk multiply.
Based on these challenges, healthcare organizations need to determine how to protect and secure everything. The best plan is prioritization since many resources are stretched within an organization’s IT department. It is important to focus on the cybersecurity basics and “do them very well.” Some of the basic cybersecurity measures that CIOs and CISOs can focus on are:
- Discover all assets on a network.
- Perform vulnerability assessments and patch management.
- Manage users and accounts for the various systems.
- Create an incident response plan and test it to ensure the process makes sense.
With the need for personal and financial information to be readily available in various healthcare organizations, the industry has a unique and high-intensity cybersecurity risk. Putting the proper security measures in place will help protect this data that is stored in multiple locations and systems. Speak to an advisor today to start implementing the cybersecurity basics at your organization.