Medical device usage is on the rise, and that reality potentially puts people at risk if those gadgets have security flaws. It's crucial for device manufacturers, industry regulators and health practitioners to work together to ensure safety are paramount as adoption rises.Internal health devices are particularly at risk, especially since patients and providers may not immediately notice issues. The people who use or prescribe them assume they'll work as expected and typically don't have ways to
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Cybercriminals
Protecting Medical Device Security in the Age of Ransomware
From medication pumps to pacemakers, people depend on lifesaving devices to live their healthiest possible lives and manage chronic ailments. Many of those patients likely hear about cybercriminals orchestrating massive data breaches, and might get concerned about one of those incidents compromising their information.However, they probably haven’t considered the hackers might target the devices in their bodies or the ones they otherwise use for better well-being.Hospitals Must Pay Attention to
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Evolving Hacker Behaviors to Disrupt Healthcare Services
Most people don’t spend much time thinking about what complex organizations hospitals are. Whether anticipating the joyful arrival of a newborn baby or worrying about an unexpected illness or injury, hospital visitors aren’t usually thinking about cybersecurity. Even most hospital employees only see a piece of the big picture, with little reason to consider operational risk.But lots of people are indeed losing sleep over cyber threats to patient safety — IT administrators and clinical engineers
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Why It’s Time for Hospitals to Become Immune to Ransomware
Editor's Note: Greg Maudsley is a cyber security expert at Menlo Security, a Silicon Valley-based cyber security company that protects organizations from cyber attack by eliminating the threat of malware.Hospitals and other healthcare organizations (HCOs) are increasingly singled out by cyber criminals for ransomware and other attacks. Not only are patients’ sensitive records being targeted, but also – as the FBI warns – their intellectual property or credit card information. The
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5 Lessons Learned From The WannaCry Ransomware Attacks for Hospitals
Editor's Note: Richard Sullivan is chief government and revenue officer for Medsphere Systems Corporation, the solution provider for the OpenVista electronic health record.Will information technology ever realize an imagined future where security is strong enough, reliable enough, secure enough to block any and all attacks?It’s a dubious proposition made more uncertain by the recent WannaCry ransomware incident that started a couple of weeks ago and continued around the globe for several days.
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