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Cybersecurity in Healthcare – A Comprehensive Demonstration

Updated Date: Aug 7, 2024
Cybersecurity in Healthcare

Blog Summary: Cyber security in healthcare is now an emerging term as we are witnessing new cyber threats in the healthcare domain every single day. But how do we combat these sophisticated attacks that are strong enough to damage healthcare organizations to the core? That's why we've curated this entire article that covers everything you need to know about cyber security in healthcare, along with the latest cyber security measures that can potentially safeguard the healthcare industry.

Cyber attacks in healthcare? This question would have been possibly considered hypothetical before the year 2019! A common perspective of the healthcare industry has changed post the arrival of COVID-19 in the world; earlier healthcare and cyber security were barely addressed together.

You must be thinking about how healthcare and cyber security share any relationship. First, you need to see how cyber attacks are adversely affecting the healthcare industry. As per the World Economic Forum, healthcare data breaches cost an average of $10.93 million each—nearly double the financial industry's average of $5.9 million.

Astonished? Relax, let us help you connect the dots.

The healthcare industry is advancing at a rapid pace; it's an ever-expanding domain. Back in the year 2019, the entire world witnessed a whole new face affliction that spread unbearable trauma across the globe. However, the entire world managed to conquer the pandemic, and we can't thank the emerging healthcare sector.

However, there is a dark side of the consistently emerging healthcare industry, too, and that is cybercrime. That inherently makes cyber security in healthcare a HERO. Learning how cybersecurity in the healthcare industry contributes to protecting the healthcare domain from potential crimes is a need of an hour.

In this blog, we are going to discuss all about cyber security in healthcare so that you can understand all the ins and outs of the concept.

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Table of Contents
  1. What is Cyber Security in Healthcare?
  2. Role of Cyber Security in Healthcare
  3. Biggest Cyber Security Threats in Healthcare Industry
  4. Key Challenges of Cyber Security in Healthcare
  5. Powerful Strategies to Overcome Cyber security Threats
  6. Achieve Impeccable Security with ZeroThreat

What is Cyber Security in Healthcare?

Cyber security in healthcare is nothing but security practices, technologies, and measures performed to safeguard sensitive patient data, medical records, and healthcare systems from unauthorized access, cyber attacks, and data breaches. It also protects electronic health information (EHI) stored and transmitted across networks, by maintaining its confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Over the past five years, hacking-related data breaches increased by 239%, and ransomware attacks saw a surge of 278%. Hacking incidents accounted for 49% of all reported breaches in the previous years and they comprised 79.7% of all data breaches reported.

The above-mentioned stats clearly indicate why cybersecurity is essential in healthcare to protect patient data from cyberattacks. Healthcare organizations hold sensitive information that cybercriminals target, such as medical records and personal details. That’s the reason why we need robust cybersecurity measures. They are vital to safeguard data integrity, maintain healthcare operations, and ensure patient trust and safety. Let’s learn in detail how cybersecurity contributes to the healthcare industry.

Role of Cyber Security in Healthcare

Let's see how cyber security's core components are performing in the healthcare domain. Refer to this in detail to learn about how healthcare and cyber security relate.

1. Data Protection

With advanced data protection, hospitals can ensure that patients' healthcare records, confidential data, and other sensitive information are safely stored and transmitted through strong encryption methods. This comprises safeguarding data both at rest (stored data) and in transit (data being transmitted).

2. Access Control

Ensure that uncompromising mechanisms are performed to control accessibility to patient data based on roles, responsibilities, and the principle of least privilege. This includes making use of robust authentication mechanisms (such as two-factor authentication), authorization protocols, and strong encryption to make sure only authorized users can access data when required.

3. Network Security

Implementing stronger network security includes protecting the entire IT infrastructure that supports healthcare operations, along with networks, servers, and endpoints (like computers and medical services). Moreover, network security covers performing security measures like firewall protection, intrusion detection systems, and uniform security audits to assess and prevent potential vulnerabilities.

4. Operational Continuity

Operational continuity involves managing the availability and reliability of healthcare IT systems and medical devices through essential cyber security measures. This prevents disruptions to patient care and ensures healthcare services can operate seamlessly without compromising security and efficiency.

5. Compliance

Following regulatory compliance involves abiding by regulatory standards and frameworks like HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the United States. Implementation of compliance allows you to ensure that organizations are following the necessary regulatory requirements to safeguard patients' sensitive information, conduct regular risk assessments, and maintain proper security measures.

Biggest Cyber Security Threats in Healthcare Industry

Let's learn in detail about cyber threats in healthcare sector that are prevailing in the year 2024. Refer to these threats to mitigate proper security measures to minimize them.

Cybersecurity Threats in Healthcare Domain

1. Data Breaches

The breach of data has a notably awful impact on the healthcare industry. It involves unauthorized access to patients' confidential information, such as medical histories, records, and other personal data. Attackers often intend to exploit vulnerabilities in healthcare IT infrastructure through malicious activities like phishing attacks to violate and compromise data.

2. Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware is malicious software that is created to encrypt data on healthcare systems. The data remains encrypted until the ransom amount is paid to reaccess the data. These attackers are eligible to disrupt patient care and compromise confidential patient information and hospital operations.

Ransomware attacks grew at a blazing speed during COVID-19. As per Business Standard's survey, the average ransom demanded was $4.8 million, with 62% of cases exceeding $1 million and a median ransom payment of $2 million.

3. IoT and Medical Device Vulnerabilities

Inter-connected medical devices like infusion pumps and heart monitors are likely to be vulnerable to cyber attacks. Attackers can exploit these vulnerabilities and access healthcare networks or misuse device functionality, which can pose significant cyber security risks to patients' safety and data integrity.

4. Social Engineering

Social engineering tactics like phishing emails manipulate people into sharing insights about themselves that they are not supposed to share. These tactics manipulate people into downloading software that they shouldn't download or visiting websites they shouldn't visit. Attackers also trick people into sending money or making other mistakes that compromise their personal or organizational security.

5. Supply Chain Vulnerabilities

Healthcare organizations depend on different vendors and third-party suppliers for IT services and providing medical equipment. Supply chain attacks target these suppliers to obtain accessibility to healthcare networks for compromising critical data.

6. Insecure Cloud Services

Cloud computing services are optimized in the healthcare industry for healthcare data storage and management. However, it also comes up with potential security threats like security misconfiguration, unauthorized access to confidential information, or data breaches.

According to Gartner, by the year 2025, 90% of organizations that fail to manage public cloud usage will inadvertently share sensitive data. This prediction makes it indispensable for healthcare organizations to diligently act on the issue of cloud security by considering taking required measures like encryption, access controls, and continuous monitoring.

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Key Challenges of Cyber Security in Healthcare

Let's address the key challenges of cybersecurity in the healthcare industry in detail in order to enforce equally defensive security measures in healthcare.

1. Data Security

The healthcare industry faces every new sophisticated cyber attack each day. These attacks are capable of causing unbearable damage to healthcare organizations' reputations by breaching their critical data such as patients' medical records, insurance information, and other personal details. Overcoming such losses becomes very problematic for organizations.

Hence, the implementation of robust security practices is a major healthcare cyber security challenge for organizations, as security attacks are not likely to be resolved easily.

2. Regulatory Compliance

Healthcare organizations are bound to abide by strict regulatory compliance frameworks like HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the United States, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in Europe, and other regional laws. These regulations require precise standards concerning data privacy, security protocols, reporting breaches, and obtaining patient consent. It's quite challenging to interpret complex regulatory requirements, ensure the maintenance of set standards, and navigate other legal implications of non-compliance.

3. Legacy Systems

Only 14% of organizations are geared up to defend against a cyber attack. One of the main reasons is that the ratio of healthcare organizations relying on outdated software is pretty high. Due to the lack of modern features and the latest security patches, these systems are more likely to be vulnerable to exploitation. Posing the latest security patches and fixes regularly is still a challenge for many healthcare organizations due to the dilemma of balancing patient care with the requirement to upgrade and secure aging infrastructure.

4. Interoperability

Healthcare providers frequently share patients' details with multiple systems, departments, and organizations for different purposes. Accomplishing interoperability along with maintaining data security is a challenging task in securing and exchanging confidential medical information. Healthcare organizations have to enforce standards-based approaches, secure data exchange protocols, and access controls to protect patient data integrity and privacy, which is often a challenging and complex task.

Powerful Strategies to Overcome Cyber Security Threats in the Healthcare Sector

Let's delve deeper into unfailing strategies to defeat cyber security risks in the healthcare domain. These strategies help you learn the importance of cybersecurity in the healthcare domain and enable you to keep potential attacks at bay.

Tips to Prevent Cybersecurity Threats in Healthcare

1. Risk Assessment and Management

Always ensure that regular risk assessments are conducted, which include identifying assets like patient records and medical devices and assessing common vulnerabilities like outdated software and weak passwords.

Utilize risk assessment frameworks such as NIST SP 800-30 or ISO/IEC 27005 to enhance the entire security process. Moreover, prioritize risks on the basis of their influence on patients' safety, confidentiality, and operational continuity.

2. Strong Authentication and Access Implementation

Enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) to assess systems and confidential information. It requires users to provide more than two verification factors to obtain access.

Follow the practice of creating strong password policies that mandate intricate passwords and regular password changes.

3. Data Encryption

Encrypt sensitive data both at rest (stored data) and in transit (data being transmitted over networks) with the help of robust encryption algorithms such as AES-256. Also, always make sure to manage encryption keys securely and rotate them periodically.

Perform encryption solutions that adhere to healthcare domain regulations like HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the United States or GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in Europe.

Moreover, for unshakeable security, optimize AI-driven methodologies to automate the overall security process, as AI plays a crucial role in cyber security

4. Uniform Software Updates and Patch Management

Perform regular software updates and establish a strong patch management process to check that all software-encompassing operating systems, applications, and medical devices are regularly updated with security patches, considering the latest cyber security trends

Implement advanced patch management tools to rationalize the process and minimize the risk of human error.

5. Implement Firewalls and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)

Deploy firewalls to monitor and control incoming and outgoing network traffic by restricting unauthorized access and preventing abnormal activities. Also, intrusion detection systems (IDS) should be deployed to capture suspicious network traffic or behavior patterns that possibly imply a potential cyber security threat.

Moreover, firewalls and IDS should be configured to log events and alerts for examination and response by cyber security experts.

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Achieve Impeccable Security with ZeroThreat

In conclusion, we have learned that a keen and consistent observation of cyber-attacks helps you enforce cyber security measures in a better way. As cyber security threats in healthcare are evolving, it's becoming more challenging each day to capture them. However, with consistent work and proper implementation of security measures, we can very well defeat such attacks.

A thorough study regarding cyber security and optimization of innovative security tools act as a combination of intelligence and automation to triumph over sophisticated threats.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the HIPAA security rule in cyber security?

The HIPAA security rule is a set of national standards that require healthcare organizations to enforce safeguards to protect patients' electronic protected health information (ePHI). It outlines administrative, physical, and technical measures that covered entities and their business associates must follow to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and security of ePHI. These measures are created to prevent unauthorized access, use, or disclosure of sensitive information.

What are the common benefits of cyber security in healthcare?

What is the best healthcare cyber security certification?

Why is healthcare the biggest target for cyberattacks?

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