Healthcare Cybersecurity: Bolstering Connectivity and Protecting Patients

Security news continues to make waves in the healthcare industry, and it seems as though we hear about it on a daily basis. Lately more and more of security news relates specifically to cybersecurity, which makes sense given the massive digital transformation taking place across multiple industries such as healthcare, education, and government. As these industries continue to harness the true power of technology transformation, they are also becoming more prone to growing threats such as ransomware.

The healthcare industry is seeing a large number of security breaches whereby patient privacy and data security are being compromised. The industry is of the utmost interest for attackers, as a single patient record fetches 8-10 times more on a black market than a traditional credit card information record.

This situation is compounded as the healthcare industry continues on its digital journey of improving access and quality of patient care by investing in areas such as EHR (electronic health records) and sophisticated imaging modalities, but not investing enough in security, which will affect patient healthcare and well-being if their medical records are stolen.

The latest Cisco Security in Healthcare – Bolstering Connectivity and Protecting Patients white paper outlines what the healthcare industry must do in order to mitigate the growing threat of cybersecurity:

Major Findings

In this paper, Cisco experts analyze IT security capabilities in the healthcare industry, using data from the Cisco Security Capabilities Benchmark Study. We found that:

-Healthcare security professionals appear to be losing confidence about the strength of their security defenses.

-Budget constraints were the most likely barrier to adopting advanced security processes and technology. However, in 2015, healthcare organizations showed a greater use of outsourcing than they did in 2014. This increase may help them strengthen security defenses at affordable costs.

-Breaches may influence security improvements.

-In 2015, more healthcare organizations had an executive in charge of security. There was also an increase in the number of executives that have metrics in place to assess security. These numbers suggest that organizations in this industry are taking more active measures to address threats.

To learn about Cisco’s comprehensive advanced threat protection portfolio of products and solutions, read our latest white paper and visit www.cisco.com/go/security.