Cybersecurity for Healthcare: Challenges and Best Practices

 In 2020 , there were over 800 attempted attacks per healthcare endpoint – a whopping 9,581% increase over 2019. While the COVID-19 pandemic is largely responsible for this upsurge, these disquieting facts show that the need for cybersecurity for healthcare is greater than ever.

What is Cybersecurity for Healthcare?

In almost every month of 2020, over 1 million people were affected by data breaches against healthcare organizations. Furthermore, at $7.13 million , the average total cost of a breach was the highest in the healthcare industry. In 2021, this has risen to $9.41 million . Healthcare organizations are vulnerable to cyber attacks because they possess valuable information that’s very attractive to cybercriminals:
 

• Patients’ protected health information (PHI) and personally identifying information (PII)
• Patients’ financial information
• Organizations’ intellectual property

This data resides in assets like:
 

• Hospital information systems
• Remote patient monitoring devices
• Internet of Things (IoT) devices
• Legacy medical devices
• Communication systems

 
Cybersecurity for healthcare protects electronic data and digital assets from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, manipulation or theft. This aim underpins the importance of cybersecurity in healthcare.

Healthcare Cybersecurity Threats

Ransomware

Ransomware is a huge threat in the healthcare industry. A threat actor deploys ransomware on a medical system to encrypt its files and/or data, and then demands a ransom from the victim to unlock them. In 2021, healthcare ransomware attacks cost an average of $4.62 million per incident.

Phishing

Attackers send fake emails that mimic emails from reputed healthcare organizations. Such attacks are successful because victims are often fooled into disclosing sensitive information with high financial value.

HTTPS Spoofing

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) spoofing is an increasingly common problem for cybersecurity in healthcare 2021. Hackers clone the website of a real healthcare organization and fool users into visiting this fake website, and sharing critical information that they would not have shared if they knew the truth.

Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) Attacks

In a 2020 survey, 62% of healthcare organizations said they had been a victim of an MitM attack in the prior five years. In such attacks, hackers place themselves between healthcare providers, or between patients and providers, to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data. They may also introduce ransomware into patient records, and deny access to them unless the victim pays a ransom.

Malicious Network Traffic

This has been one of the biggest threats to cybersecurity in healthcare 2020 and 2021. Malicious traffic is a connection, file or link created and received over a corrupted or exposed network. It executes malicious operations like illegal software downloads and snooping, or leads to other problems like malware downloads, ransomware attacks or cryptojacking.

More Connected Medical Devices

Over the past decade, the use of hyper-connected medical devices has exploded. However, a majority of these devices still operate on legacy platforms, meaning many are not patched properly. These security weaknesses leave healthcare organizations vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Patient Information is Valuable

On the black market and the Dark Net, patients’ medical records are sold for hundreds of dollars. According to Trustwave, a single healthcare data record may be valued at up to $250. 

Remote Access of Devices

With the rise in remote care and telemedicine, medical professionals often use insecure or vulnerable devices to remotely access patients’ medical data. Bad actors could gain control of these devices to steal patients’ data, and even risk human lives.

Inadequate Healthcare Cybersecurity Training

Inadequate healthcare cybersecurity training means that healthcare professionals are not aware of cyber risks, and therefore cannot protect the organisation, patients and themselves from cyber attacks and data breaches.

 To secure themselves from cyber threats, healthcare organizations must follow the standard cybersecurity frameworks created by regulatory bodies. One such general framework is the NIST Cybersecurity Framework . It enables healthcare providers to establish processes to minimize cyber risk and identify areas for improvement.
 

A critical healthcare-specific cybersecurity regulation is the Healthcare Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). HIPAA directs healthcare companies to protect patient electronic PHI and enforce patient confidentiality.

Other cybersecurity healthcare regulations in the U.S. include:

• Internet of Medical Things Resilience Partnership Act
• Medical Device Cybersecurity Act of 2017
  
  

Healthcare organizations must protect their devices and data by following some cybersecurity best practices.

Ensure Uninterrupted Adherence to HIPAA

Between 2003 and 2020, there were almost 75 cases of HIPAA non-compliance that resulted in fines of over $116 million. HIPAA non-compliance for healthcare organizations can be very expensive. That’s why they must comply with the two key components of HIPAA related to healthcare data protection: 

• HIPAA Privacy Rule: Implement safeguards to protect patients’ PHI
• HIPAA Security Rule: Secure the use, creation, receipt, and maintenance of patients’ electronic PHI 
  
  

Implement Adequate Security Controls

In addition to HIPAA-mandated controls, healthcare organizations should also implement other controls to protect data and assets. One is to ensure that patient information is only accessible on a need-to-know basis. Application control and whitelisting of devices, users and applications are also critical.

Maintain Secure Backups

All healthcare providers must maintain secure data backups at offsite locations – ideally a HIPAA-compliant cloud server – so they can access it in case of a breach. Ideally, the backups must be part of a larger business continuity and data recovery plan.

Encrypt All Data

To protect data from intruders, organizations must encrypt both in-transit and at rest data.

Conduct Regular Risk Assessments

Cybersecurity for healthcare should not be an intermittent effort, but a regular and consistent one. Regular risk assessments enables healthcare organizations to spot cybersecurity weaknesses, and quickly fix them before they can lead to data breaches or other kinds of cyber threat events.

TECHNOLOGY USED IN HEALTHCARE CYBERSECURITY

Healthcare institutions are vastly interconnected and contain highly sensitive information that is very valuable. Misuse of this data can even result in the death of patients. Listed below is some of the technology that is used across the healthcare industry to safeguard their data:

BLOCKCHAIN
 

Blockchain technology is used in the healthcare industry to securely gather, verify, and share patient information. In most blockchain systems, any changes made to the data is recorded. This technology enables full transparency and interoperability within diverse healthcare systems, while ensuring that patient data is kept safe and anonymous. 

CLOUD COMPUTING

Hybrid cloud systems provide flexibility when it comes to moving data around. This flexibility gives healthcare providers more choices for updating existing legacy systems and workflows. Additionally, they also help healthcare organizations to maintain compliance with HIPAA and other standards.

ENCRYPTION

Both IoT devices and electronic health record (EHR) systems are designed to make data transmission easier. Therefore, data security is a priority in such sophisticated systems to minimize the repercussions from potential breaches. Encrypting sensitive data ensures that any stolen data is rendered unreadable and useless to the attackers. 

VIRTUAL MACHINE RISK MITIGATION

Virtual Machine software provides virtualized desktops and workspaces for various purposes. This tech can therefore be used to create a decoy system that can withstand an attack, or to make multiple copies of backup databases and desktops. Essentially, it can serve as an insurance for healthcare organizations. 

SECURITY ORCHESTRATION, AUTOMATIOM, AND RESPONSE (SOAR)

The volume of alerts, and the complexity of having so many products in the healthcare industry, can be overwhelming. SOAR solutions help by collecting event and alarm data from across platforms and organizing them into a single location or case. However, SOAR’s greatest benefit is that it helps to improve and speed up the response process by enabling security teams to automate complex workflows. 

INTRUSION DETECTION AND PREVENTION SYSTEM

Intrusion detection and prevention systems are vital to healthcare security. These systems recognize, flag, and block intrusion attacks to keep confidential patient data safe. 

ZERO TRUST MODEL

The zero trust model assumes that anybody/anything inside or outside the network perimeter must not be trusted. Each new device or person has to be independently verified to ensure maximum safety of the network’s resources and information. 

MOBILE DEVICE MANAGEMENT

Mobile device management is a growing problem in the healthcare industry as mobile devices are used by patients, doctors, and hospital employees to store patient information. MDM solutions help users to get the right data while protecting that data from unauthorized use. They also ensure data privacy and security.

REGULAR ASSESSMENTS

The first step towards improving your healthcare system is to conduct a thorough assessment of your system. This helps to expose the vulnerabilities in your system so that you can have a patching plan in place. Recent ransomware attacks on healthcare systems were mostly the result of unpatched software. It is recommended to get an assessment from a third party service provider so that you can get an independent view of your system as opposed to what your internal team already knows. 

ACCESS CONTROL

Boost your data security by implementing access controls in your organization. This includes access restrictions to patient information and certain apps, user authentication, multi-factor authentication and ensuring that only authorized users have access to sensitive data. Additionally, audit vendor accounts on a regular basis to ensure that they are in compliance with your security policies. 

MONITORING AND LOGGING

It is critical to monitor and log all access and usage data. These logs provide valuable information during an incident to find out entry points, causes, and estimate potential damages. Logs can further be used for analysis, and also to generate incident notifications based on event data that is gathered. 

SECURE YOUR NETWORK PERIMETER

Attackers can penetrate your network and steal/modify information if you don’t have appropriate defenses in places. Healthcare providers can work with their security vendors to ensure that a firewall or intrusion detection and prevention system is installed at the network perimeter. 

ATTACK RESPONSE

Does your organization have an incident response plan? Employees must be able to report suspicious activity and possible incidents in accordance with current legislation and regulatory standards.

CHECK YOUR VENDORS

Hospitals depend on numerous third-parties that have access to sensitive patient data. Sometimes, hospitals can be put at risk by these partners. Therefore, one of the most important security precautions healthcare providers can take is to carefully evaluate all business partners. 

CYBERSECURITY AWARENESS

Minimizing human error is critical to a successful information security programme. Healthcare providers should provide training programs for their employees who access systems and data. Training programs must cover areas such as password security, logging out and shutting down, using trusted websites and connections, cyber risks and data protection.

Some critical healthcare cybersecurity statistics 2020:

• Over the last year, healthcare cybersecurity attacks have risen by 55%
• Hacking incidents comprised 62% of patient data breaches
• In 572 incidents, more than 41 million patient records were breached

Cybersecurity for healthcare providers is a huge concern. Healthcare organizations must not ignore these risks, but take proactive action to strengthen their cybersecurity posture. Evolve provides strong, highly capable tools designed for cybersecurity for healthcare, get a quote with our cyber security expert.