Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Last year was an especially stressful time for healthcare systems. Not only were emergency rooms overwhelmed by patients, a number of them were also hit by system-crippling cyberattacks. According to Comparitech, in 2020 alone, 92 ransomware attacks affected over 600 healthcare organizations, exposing more than 18 million patient records. These attacks brought operations to a standstill for days or weeks at a time, costing the healthcare industry an estimated $20.8 billion.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally shifted the cyber threat landscape for Australia’s health sector, with the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) reporting a 84% increase in the number of cyber security incident reports relating to the health sector between 2019 and 2020.1 As custodians of vast volumes of highly sensitive information, the industry continues to find itself at the mercy of cyberattacks that paralyze systems until a ransom is paid—threatening the security of patient d

The HIPAA Journal reported that “2020 was the worst ever year for healthcare industry data breaches.” In the US alone, there were 642 reported data breaches in which the number of records stolen exceeded 500, and in total, nearly 29.3 million healthcare records were exposed.

Amidst the pandemic overwhelming the capacity of many hospital systems, malicious hackers have been quick to target healthcare providers and medical agencies. These cyber-attacks have hit both the United States and Europe in recent months, serving as a reminder for organizations to closely review their information security posture during these times of uncertainty.

Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) products refer to a combination of medical applications and devices connected to healthcare information technology systems through an online computer network or a wireless network. IoMT devices rely heavily on biosensors, critical in detecting an individual's tissue, respiratory, and blood characteristics. Non-bio sensors are also used to measure other patient characteristics such as heart and muscle electrical activity, motion, and body temperature.

After a year of lockdown, or nearly full lockdown, due to the ongoing health crisis, we learned a lot from how our organizations responded when we all had to change our work habits to a home-office setup.

Getting incentives for the best security practices is a win-win for all healthcare-related entities. For one, you are getting incentives, and secondly, you are making sure that you have a rock-solid defense in terms of security. Many organizations find that the rules and regulations that HIPAA entails are too extensive and overwhelming, however. What’s more, cybersecurity wasn’t a thing when HIPAA was introduced.