Cybersecurity is a critical issue for all businesses, but it is especially important in the healthcare industry. Hackers are always looking for new ways to steal patients’ personal information or ransomware hospitals into paying vast sums of money. In this blog post, we will discuss the dire state of cybersecurity in healthcare and how you can protect your business from hackers.
The Hard Facts
Let’s start by exploring the hard facts of the matter.
As of February 2022, according to TechJury.Net, the following stats
● Hospitals account for 30% of all significant data breaches.
● More than 2100 healthcare data breaches have been reported in the US since 2009.
● 18% of teaching hospitals reported that they had experienced a data breach.
● 6% of pediatric hospitals reported data breaches.
● 34% of healthcare data breaches come from unauthorized access or disclosure.
● By the end of 2020, security breaches cost $6 trillion for healthcare companies.
● Nearly 80 million people were affected by the Anthem Breach.
These statistics are absolutely shocking when considering how much money is being spent and lost on these attacks. All money could be poured back into the healthcare system to provide people the service that it was all initially set up to provide.
With these facts under our belt, it becomes evident that not only is the state of security in the healthcare system at an alarming level, but we desperately need to do something about it.
What was the Anthem Breach?
Here’s a case study to show you precisely what we mean when we say that the healthcare system is under threat.
In 2015, the second-largest health insurer in the United States (at the time), Anthem Inc, was subject to one of the most massive data breaches in history. The hackers gained access through a single user that unknowingly allowed them into their system through an email phishing attack. Once they could get in once, they had complete control over their company.
It was said that a foreign government carried out the attack, for what motive we cannot know, but it is clear that there are some genuine threats to our healthcare system.
As a result, the personal information of nearly 80 million people was compromised, including social security numbers, addresses, and other private data. This type of attack can result in so much more than just stolen identities- it could mean that someone has access to your health records and could use them for malicious purposes.
How can you Protect Yourself?
Now that we understand just how big of an issue cybersecurity actually is in healthcare let’s go over some practical steps you can take to protect your business.
Ensure that all employees are properly trained in identifying phishing emails and other common tactics used by hackers.
● Use strong passwords and change them often.
● Implement two-factor authentication for logging into accounts.
● Regularly back up your data in case of an attack.
● Install antivirus software and keep it up to date.
● Ensure that your networks are secure and password protected.
These are just a few basic steps that you can take to help protect your business from cyberattacks, but there is no silver bullet when it comes to cybersecurity.
Whether you’re practicing yourself, introducing these security methods to your team, or you’re outsourcing your security processes to a professional third party, like Essential IT, the most important thing you need to be focusing on is making sure you’re actually taking action.
Conclusion
If you work in the healthcare system, then these are things you should be doing yourself or encouraging your teams to focus on. You need to be vigilant in protecting your data and your systems and always be prepared for the next attack as you never know when it could happen, or what kind of unrepairable damage it could cause.