Hospitals and other critical healthcare systems face skyrocketing risks as ransomware attacks—which most commonly target IoT devices—continue to escalate. In 2021 alone, IoT ransomware attack incidents targeting healthcare organizations increased by 123%. While most healthcare systems have a healthy respect for the importance of securing the myriad Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices humming within their facilities, many harbor misconceptions that hamper their abilities to
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Why The Stakes are Higher for Hospitals When It Comes to Data Loss & Inadequate Storage Infrastructure
According to the World Economic Forum, hospitals produce around 50 petabytes of data per year. And with 6,039 hospitals in the US alone, that amounts to a sizeable amount of data requiring secure storage. Data consists not only of confidential patient medical records but also of operational data retained by US hospitals such as personal and financial information. This ever-increasing amount of patient data and growing risks associated with its loss, mean the stakes have therefore never been
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Patching Cybersecurity Gaps in Healthcare, with New FDA Guidelines and Zero Trust
When it comes to protecting patients from the impacts of ransomware, the time has come for the healthcare sector to rethink the way it approaches cyber resilience -- starting with Zero Trust strategies. The unprecedented wave of ransomware attacks on the healthcare sector has upended long-held assumptions about network security. Confidence in traditional methods alone and the philosophies behind them, have been undermined. The ransomware era has become a time of reckoning – particularly
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EMPI/MPI: An End-to-End Approach to Patient Data Integrity
Maintaining patient data integrity is more complicated than ever; cybersecurity threats loom, patients are taking more ownership of their care (self-registration, for example) and health system merger activity is on the rise. It can make the quest for the ever-elusive 1% maximum duplicate rate seem, at times, unattainable. But a secure, accurate, and duplicate-free MPI/EMPI can be achieved. It just requires a multi-pronged approach to protect data throughout its journey into a health system
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Defining Cyber Immunity: A Solution to Cyberattacks
In recent years, the world has become aware of the effects and nature of a far-reaching virus. Biologically, a virus is something that inserts itself into the body and can replicate itself enough to infect the host. While this is true for living things, technology can also be exposed to viruses. – codes that can replicate themselves using different methodologies with the ultimate goal to destroy data, hold it for ransom, or breach security. By some counts, there are more than 2,200
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What Healthcare Leaders Need to Do Now About Ransomware
If ransomware is not a topic of conversation around any healthcare organization’s boardroom table, directors and senior executives may be exposing the organization (and themselves) to considerable risk. Here’s a guide to ransomware trends for 2022 and steps healthcare leaders can take to help protect their organizations. Ransomware trends in 2022 The risk of a ransomware attack in 2022 is substantial, with gangs specializing in targeting the healthcare sector. Last year saw dozens of
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Healthcare Is A Cyber Criminal’s Dream, But It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way
Healthcare is a cyber criminal’s dream. It presents the intersection of a data treasure trove, weak security posture, limited resources, complicated supply chain, and patient care delivery. When faced with having to pick a priority to optimize for, healthcare will, of course, always pick delivering healthcare. This means that when tradeoffs must be made and resources are limited immediate patient care is prioritized over anything else. A great example of this is looking at how
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3-Step Ransomware Recovery Strategy for Healthcare Organizations
At some point, the chances are high that ransomware will pierce the defenses you have tried to put in place at your healthcare organization. When that occurs, your healthcare organization needs a ransomware recovery strategy, which enhances your typical backup and recovery processes. Below is a three-step program for ensuring that you can recover from an attack. Step 1 - Frequent Backups Ransomware, unlike any other disaster, can strike anywhere. No data center is safe. It can also hit at
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Why the Digital-First, Patient-Centered Care is Critical to Healthcare
In the turmoil of one of the hardest years the healthcare industry has experienced, many healthcare organizations innovated nearly overnight, transforming bedside tablets into virtual care providers and parking garages into field hospitals. Through the help of agile, flexible technology, healthcare has empowered providers to support patient care anywhere. The pandemic created a tipping point: The healthcare industry must accelerate its drive toward a digital-first mentality.
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Escalating Cyberattacks on Healthcare Organizations Highlight Need for Security Interventions
Healthcare organizations have faced continual stress from heavy COVID-19 caseloads in 2020. Cyberattacks on their information networks also loomed as a serious threat, and the pressure to protect data is expected to grow this year, as more criminals target healthcare providers. Protecting patient data from unauthorized access has long been a regulatory prerequisite for healthcare organizations. But increasingly, cybercriminals see profit potential in attacking and crippling their networks,
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