Cybersecurity in the healthcare industry is a growing field. As more and more patient information and systems come online, it leaves plenty of room for cyber attackers to exploit vulnerabilities.
Although technology benefits the healthcare industry, making treatments more effective and efficient, there are some negatives to implementing new technological features. One of these drawbacks is the requirement for more advanced cybersecurity solutions.
Read on to find out the biggest threats to healthcare cybersecurity, why hackers target healthcare, and what the future of healthcare cybersecurity may look like. You can learn more about what we learned from cybersecurity attacks in healthcare here.
The Current Stage of Healthcare and Cybersecurity
Like most other industries, the healthcare sector is integrating more and more systems and technology into their daily operations. As a result, automation, interoperability, and data analytics are integral parts of patients’ healthcare and services.
While these features allow healthcare organizations to provide better care and service to their patients, they are also more vulnerable to cyberattacks.
A cybersecurity attack could impact a healthcare institution’s finances and compromise patient care when critical medical records cannot be accessed. The most significant healthcare cybersecurity breach in the United States to date was that of health insurance provider Anthem Inc. which affected 78.8 million individuals. The average cost of a healthcare cybersecurity data breach is $10.1 million, and nearly 46 million people in the United States have been affected by cybersecurity breaches of healthcare data in 2021 alone.
Although so many people have been affected, the industry has experienced a relatively small number of large-scale data breaches between 2009 and 2021. During this time, only 712 large-scale data breaches occurred. This shows just how many people are affected by each cybersecurity attack.
Phishing is the most common type of cybercrime that targets healthcare organizations. It usually occurs via email or through fraudulent websites but can also be done over the phone or through text messages.
Phishing is a type of cybercrime where the attacker gains the trust of their targets to obtain sensitive information from them. For example, the attacker could pose as an individual and win the victim’s trust over time. The victim will then be manipulated into providing personal information like banking details or login information.
Alternatively, the attacker could pretend to be a legitimate institution like a bank or insurance company. They will then trick people into providing their personally identifiable information or other sensitive and private data.
Once an attacker has their victim’s information, they can steal their victim’s identity or cause them significant financial loss.
What Are Some of The Biggest Cybersecurity Challenges Facing the Healthcare Sector?
The healthcare industry is one of the most attacked business sectors. As a result, it faces some unique cybersecurity challenges that need to be considered moving forward.
Patients’ information is extremely valuable on the darknet, and institutions are constantly facing the challenge of keeping their information secure.
Medical devices often do not have enough security controls. This leaves these devices vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Another challenge faced by the healthcare sector is that medical professionals need to access medical data remotely. This requirement means data must be stored and made available to persons who need access from external devices. The need for external access makes keeping the data secure more difficult.
Often, healthcare workers do not have enough training to recognize and identify cyber risks. This makes it difficult to protect a healthcare institution from cyberattacks.
Many healthcare facilities use outdated technology. Unfortunately, old technologies are generally more vulnerable to cyberattacks, making the organization and its data less secure.
What Are the Negative Effects of Technology in Healthcare?
While computer technology has benefited the healthcare field, it has also brought some negative aspects. Here are a few negative effects of technology in healthcare.
Cybersecurity risks
While using technology in the healthcare sector could make it easy to generate, store, and transfer patient data between systems and parties, it also makes the industry more vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks.
In the event of a cyberattack, patient information can be accessed and used to commit various types of fraud. More than that, healthcare organizations could be held ransom for large amounts of money.
During a cyberattack, attackers could change critical patient information. This could lead healthcare professionals to make erroneous decisions regarding patient diagnosis or treatment plans.
Cyber attackers could interfere with connected medical devices affecting the patient’s medical treatment and outcome. Although no such attack has been documented to date, the risk remains real.
Reduction of doctor-patient interaction
Telehealth and remote monitoring make it easy and convenient for a patient to receive medical advice without seeing a doctor face-to-face. This is not only convenient but could also potentially help avoid health problems escalating if health consultations were delayed because a patient was hesitant to see a medical professional in person.
However, while technology makes it easier to access medical assistance, patients often deal with dashboards on connected medical devices instead of humans. This lack of human interaction could lead to miscommunication and frustration, especially if the system has been poorly implemented.
Patients and healthcare professionals may find it difficult to interact with the systems, discarding the idea of using the very technology designed to make healthcare more accessible, convenient, and readily available.
Increased patient costs
It costs money to research, design, develop, and implement new technologies. This is as true for the healthcare sector as any other. While advancing technology could bring treatment options that were previously not available, this often comes with a cost. In most cases, the patients carry these costs, and if they cannot do so, they cannot get the best treatment.
Risk of error
While technology can sometimes eliminate human error, it could also fall prey to bugs or malfunction. This could potentially have life-threatening consequences for patients.
What Is the Most Important Aspect of Cybersecurity in Healthcare?
Cybersecurity in the healthcare industry is essential for various reasons. However, poor cybersecurity could leave a healthcare organization vulnerable to cyberattacks.
A cyberattack could have a massive financial impact on a healthcare organization and cause immense damage to its reputation.
Some attacks could affect the performance of medical devices or alter patient information. This could ultimately lead to them receiving the wrong treatment that could cause them harm or may even be fatal.
Ultimately, the most critical aspect of cybersecurity in healthcare is protecting patients and their personal information. This data should be kept safe and secure, and every possible precaution against a cyberattack should be harnessed.
What Is the Greatest Threat to Healthcare Data Security?
Some experts believe that ransomware attacks are one of the biggest cyber threats to healthcare data security. Healthcare providers cannot risk losing access to their patients’ information as, in many cases, it could quite literally mean a case of life or death.
Other experts believe that mobile health (also sometimes called digital health) makes the industry more vulnerable to cybersecurity breaches. The use of mobile devices by healthcare providers, medical personnel, and patients increases the avenues available for attackers to exploit a healthcare organization’s vulnerabilities.
Endpoint protection and response are also becoming a cybersecurity concern in the healthcare industry. This refers to mobile devices, laptops, and computers that might be used by individuals who are working remotely. It is crucial that these devices are secured with reliable and trustworthy healthcare cybersecurity software.
Put in a nutshell, the biggest threat to healthcare data security is insecure data. When data is not exceptionally well protected, it’s vulnerable to a cyberattack.
Why Do Hackers Target Healthcare?
Hackers often target healthcare organizations because the data stored on these systems is valuable—and there is a lot of it. Patient medical and billing information can be sold on the darknet to be used to commit insurance fraud.
Hackers can use ransomware to lock down back-office systems and systems that are critical for patient care. By locking down these systems, hackers can demand massive ransom payments from the hospital in exchange for access to these essential systems.
Healthcare organizations often cannot afford the best and most recent security technologies. This means they’re easy targets for cybercriminals.
What Does the Future of Healthcare Cybersecurity Look Like?
Deloitte has identified “six key factors driving cyber in the future of healthcare.” The company has given cybersecurity considerations that go with each of these to empower leaders to limit the cybersecurity threat that comes with the increased use of technology in healthcare settings.
The company predicts that in the future, healthcare data will be “more widely shared, collected, and analyzed.” This could allow healthcare organizations to become more efficient and provide patients with better care and service. While this is the case, Deloitte cautions healthcare companies to upgrade their data protection standards and improve the awareness, detection, and response capabilities to cyber-attacks.
Deloitte has identified six cyber and cybersecurity drivers that healthcare industry stakeholders must be aware of.
1. Agility
Often data privacy and cybersecurity practices in the healthcare sector cannot adapt to change quickly. Deloitte suggests that entities should have different departments run pilot efforts of cybersecurity and data privacy practices to allow team members to gain insight and improve the agility of these efforts.
2. Ecosystem Coordination
In many cases, organizations do not operate in isolation. They often use third-party companies when handling data. Healthcare organizations need to use and trust devices and the data that these devices provide. The ecosystem created between a healthcare entity and a third-party company should be secure and trustworthy.
3. Devices
Healthcare organizations will likely start using more devices as part of their treatment offering. As a result, these organizations will need to be confident that they can trust the devices and the data produced by them. More than that, data, security, and privacy risks that devices like wearables and home-based telemetry devices carry should be considered, and procedures should be put in place to limit these as much as possible.
4. Data
Deloitte predicts that the future of healthcare will include even more devices, data, and sharing. The company believes that interoperable data and open platforms will be integral to the healthcare industry. Because of this, digital privacy will become extremely important, and healthcare organizations must address privacy and ethics issues when developing their data systems.
5. Artificial Intelligence
Healthcare organizations should proactively run threat analysis on their Artificial intelligence (AI) applications. They also need to ensure that they protect all the source data and algorithms produced by and relating to AI. Deloitte suggests that companies build a “holistic framework” to cultivate trustworthy AI and AI ethics. This would help companies address cybersecurity threats or ethical risks that could emerge when using AI and machine learning to make business decisions.
6. User-Friendly
If systems are complicated, consumers won’t use them. Patients are taking more control over their healthcare and the decisions around it. Healthcare organizations must ensure that any cybersecurity and data privacy solutions they put in place are easy to use. People will be less likely to share their private information with an organization when they don’t have access to that information themselves.
Deloitte predicts that healthcare is on the verge of massive changes. With these changes, new risks will be introduced. The company believes that it is of utmost importance that cybersecurity and privacy become integral to all new healthcare services and solutions. The company states that key players in the healthcare industry should not only focus on the future of health, but do so while keeping consumer information safe and secure.
Some Key Things to Understand About Healthcare Cybersecurity
What is a HIPAA violation?
HIPPA refers to The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. The act was introduced to simplify healthcare administration, reduce and eliminate waste, prevent healthcare fraud, and ensure employees could keep their healthcare coverage between jobs. It also includes standards to improve patients’ rights and to safeguard Protected Health Information (PHI).
In terms of HIPAA compliance, A HIPAA violation occurs if a Covered Entity or Business Associates fails to comply with the Standards set out in The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Covered Entities include health plans, healthcare clearing houses, and healthcare providers who electronically transmit Protected Health Information for which the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) introduced standards.
While most healthcare providers are considered to be Covered Entities, not all of them are. Business Associates are businesses that receive Protected Health Information from a Covered Entity to assist with healthcare-related activities and functions.
What is attack surface management?
Attack surface management (ASM) is the process where an organization continuously discovers, identifies, analyzes, and monitors any vulnerabilities relating to cybersecurity and potential areas where they might experience an attack. This could go hand in hand with enterprise risk management (ERM).
Attack surface management is done from the hacker’s perspective instead of from the person defending their systems from cybersecurity incidents. An objective analysis identifies potential vulnerabilities that might attract malicious attackers.
Ethical hackers harness the same methods and resources that malicious hackers might use to gain access to an organization’s systems and data. This process identifies areas that need to be looked at and strengthened against potential cyberattacks.
ASM Focuses on the organization’s external (internet-facing) IT assets as well as areas that might be vulnerable to physical or social engineering attacks. This could include insiders that might pose a threat and training employees to make them aware of phishing scams.
What is vendor risk management?
Often a company that gathers sensitive information from people shares it with a third party. Usually, this is not with malicious intent but to harvest, store, analyze, or use the data effectively and efficiently. The data is often shared with systems or individuals from a third party to help the company better make sense of the information they have gathered.
This third party is called a third-party vendor. Whenever data is shared with a third party, it increases the risk that the data might be vulnerable to a data breach or cybersecurity attack. Therefore, companies need to evaluate the risks involved with using specific third parties when it comes to sensitive data. This ongoing process of establishing whether a third party will keep data secure enough is called vendor risk management (VRM).
How Do You Get into Healthcare Cybersecurity?
Healthcare cybersecurity is a rapidly growing industry. As more and more data is collected and systems are often outdated, there is a demand for employees skilled at protecting healthcare organizations, their data, and their patients. Here is what you need to get into healthcare cybersecurity.
Education
To get into healthcare cybersecurity, you need to have an educational background in computers with a focus on network administration, network security, and databases.
Ideally, you should have a bachelor’s degree in a computer-related course that focuses on one of these topics. The course should also include computer programming, computer science, information technology, database administration, network security, or information systems.
A graduate-level degree in one or more of these fields will make you more employable. In addition, a professional certification that focuses on niche areas in the healthcare industry, its information systems, and concerns relating to keeping patient information and healthcare data secure should help you secure a career in healthcare cybersecurity.
In fact, such a professional certificate is usually a part of an employment offer. In these cases, employees will need to obtain this level of education within 90 days to one year of the commencement of employment.
Experience
Protecting sensitive information is a massive responsibility—even more so in the healthcare industry that deals with personal information, billing information, and health-related data.
Many healthcare organizations look for candidates who have a history of working in cybersecurity and have successfully protected data from cybersecurity incidents.
This creates a situation where candidates cannot be hired without experience and cannot gain experience without being hired. To circumvent this, students could apply for and complete cybersecurity internships at local healthcare organizations.
Keeping patient data secure is one of the biggest cybersecurity concerns of the healthcare industry. Cybersecurity incidents could cost healthcare organizations millions of dollars and significantly damage their reputations.
While this is the case, the damage and harm that it could cause patients in terms of identity theft, potential erroneous medical treatment, and their personal information being sold on the darknet make it extremely important for healthcare institutions to evaluate and strengthen their cybersecurity.
Greater cybersecurity systems are needed to protect healthcare institutions and keep their patients safe. That’s why RiskRecon, a Mastercard company, can help you set up the best defenses against cyberattacks. Sign up today for a free 30-day trial.
