How to Successfully Manage Healthcare Cybersecurity Issues and Challenges

The healthcare industry consistently and significantly outranks every other industry in both the cost of a data breach and the number of data breaches reported every year. In 2021, the average cost of a data breach for a healthcare entity was nearly $10 million. In the same year, over 714 data breaches of 500 or more records occurred, affecting over 40 million people.

Having a robust cybersecurity framework has never been more important for healthcare entities.

The Current Cybersecurity Landscape for Health Systems

Wondering about cybersecurity in healthcare? If you’re a leader in the healthcare industry, to ensure your cybersecurity plans are sufficient for today’s challenges, you must understand what’s at stake, what your actual risks are and where you might find security gaps—especially if your IT environment has changed. Here’s what you need to know about cybersecurity in healthcare today:

For cybercriminals, healthcare data is worth the wait

Once a cybercriminal gets into an environment, it can take a while to recognize they are there. And in healthcare environments, it often takes more time to identify and respond to a breach than in other environments. One reason for this is that cybercriminals can be more certain of the value of healthcare data. So, they invest more time and stay “quiet” within the system to get farther and collect more information to sell.

Another reason is insufficient threat monitoring, such as using legacy detection tools like a traditional signature-based anti-virus. When organizations try to monitor for threats on their own, their efforts are often inadequate. Knowing which indicators could lead to a breach is challenging, and it’s hard to know if you’re monitoring the right things.

If threat monitoring is proving too difficult internally, health systems have the option of outsourcing monitoring to a reputable third party. With professional monitoring, you’re working with experts who know how to set up networks, where to put sensors and what to look for.

Health systems are an ideal target for ransomware

Ransomware is impacting every industry. But healthcare systems are particularly vulnerable because when health professionals need information, they usually need it right away. Availability, timeliness and confidentiality are vital, and ransomware directly affects these core needs. This has been a known problem in the healthcare industry, but it’s a challenge to get users to take it seriously.

Ransomware attacks spread quickly, and if you don’t have the right security and technology, an attack can impact systems and mission-critical devices your operations depend on. Many organizations don’t recognize these dependencies until that connection is compromised.

One of the biggest risks with healthcare cyber attacks is withholding of immediate information. When systems are unavailable, doctors don’t have basic medical information on patients like blood type, allergies and previous conditions. Thus, when a patient comes in needing medical attention and the system is down, precious time is spent trying to determine this information.

Cyberattacks have a human cost

Malware can have serious, life-threatening implications for hospitals. It can impact transportation, communications and medical procedures by blocking access to vital, immediate information. There is a human cost to this.

According to research from Vanderbilt University, data breaches lead to 2,160 deaths per year. Consider the recent ransomware attack at UHS we previously mentioned. Though it’s reported that no patients were harmed, surgeries were delayed, and ambulances redirected. Such measures present serious risks for patients.

Remote work broadens the environment

Before the proliferation of remote work, to break into or hack a system, a third party had to get into a corporate network. Organizations could create boundaries that protected everything inside that network, whether on-premise, in the cloud or both.

Now, with more remote employees, the risks to our environments extend to where people are working. Whether they’re connecting their corporate computers to home networks or accessing corporate data from their personal computers, the surface area of the network has increased. Cybercriminals recognize they only need to get into one place, like a home network, as opposed to a protected corporate network.

With this, people are more of a risk. And users must recognize the role they play in cybersecurity in healthcare. Organizations should educate users to help them understand:

• How to set up and evaluate the security of their at-home networks.
• Security implications of who accesses their computer to do what, such as kids playing games or doing homework.
• How actions like connecting to devices and USB drives, which might contain malware, impact security.

Creating that awareness is invaluable to security. It means users will think critically, consider the security implications, and perhaps reach out to your experts before determining an action is safe.

Legacy systems have inherent risks

Healthcare data is sensitive and valuable, and protecting it demands a high level of consideration. Unfortunately, legacy systems do not have the necessary capabilities to meet today’s best security practices. And though there are regulatory requirements that govern the protection of this data, unless an organization has the resources, many legacy systems will increasingly pose a risk.

Leadership at hospitals and medical organizations must be more strategic when it comes to protecting data. They must go beyond simply patching an outdated system and relying on contracts with third parties which may be storing and transmitting data. Unfortunately, many don’t take this issue seriously until they’ve had an incident. Then, it becomes a clean-up operation that costs a lot more than preventative measures would have.

Give the security component proper attention and ask yourself: what is really required to protect this data? It may be that you need to improve your system or find new solutions.

The cloud introduces new security implications

When organizations move to the cloud, they tend to approach it purely from a business or technology standpoint without considering the security implications. Migrating data from on-premise servers to cloud environments has many business benefits, and organizations can gain inherent capabilities, but there are also inherent risks.

A lot of healthcare organizations are moving to the cloud right now, and if you’re considering this step, please be strategic and don’t neglect the security transition. You must have a strict transition plan that outlines how you’ll adapt your security to be cloud-focused and account for relevant risks. For many, this transition also involves managing a remote workforce. As mentioned, there are new risks here as well, and your plan should reflect this new environment: cloud-based and remote.

Actions for Healthcare Leaders to Take

Your next steps will depend on how mature your cybersecurity program is. If you have security staff and plans in place, given how the environment may have changed, you should still assess your systems, identify and report current risks and determine if you’re being as efficient as possible. To manage more complex online security matters, such as improving or moving from a legacy system, bring in a third party to search, support and help identify the best cybersecurity management solution for your organization.

If you’re less mature in cybersecurity planning, you need a safety roadmap that identifies your risks, the cybersecurity solutions for healthcare you need and how you can implement them in a sustainable way. No matter what level of maturity you’re at, prevention and awareness are key to avoiding breaches and cyber attacks on healthcare organizations.

Our team of IT professionals has identified 12 questions to help gauge your current security risk areas and assess your overall IT health. Most importantly, the results will provide tips to help you make actionable improvements now.

From data backups to your administrative protocols and password protection processes, this IT quiz will give you some quick wins to take back to your organization. Know how your security stacks up while learning best practices for optimum network stability, disaster recovery, and IT health.