The healthcare industry increasingly relies on technology to provide the highest quality of care to patients, efficiently run operations, and maintain a wide variety of systems to keep facilities clean, safe, and secure. Digitized patient records, connected medical devices, and building automation systems (BAS) have improved patient care efficiency and led to streamlined workflows and operations, but with these advantages come significant challenges.
The increased number and scale of cyberattacks targeting the healthcare industry means there’s a greater spotlight on adequately securing the technology that healthcare delivery organizations (HDOs) rely on everyday. Finding adequate healthcare cybersecurity solutions that protect HDOs and allow them to provide critical care unimpeded is vitally important.
Let’s dive into the topic of healthcare cybersecurity, its emerging threats, and some key strategies to safeguard the devices in the healthcare environment.
Table of Contents
What is Healthcare Cybersecurity
Emerging Threats in Healthcare Cybersecurity
Existing Regulations and Guidelines
How to Ensure Compliance and Comprehensive Protection
What is Healthcare Cybersecurity?
Healthcare cybersecurity refers to the collection of practices, procedures, and technologies used to protect electronic health information, patient care delivery, medical devices, and healthcare facilities from cyber threats. A breach in healthcare cybersecurity can compromise patient safety, violate privacy, instigate identity theft, increase mortality rates, and lead to significant financial losses. Not to be overlooked, it also affects the trust patients place in the health systems they rely on.
If you’re wondering whether your HDO could be at risk for a cyber incidents, consider the fact that Claroty found an abundance of vulnerable medical devices in healthcare organizations, including 77% of hospital information systems, 72% of imaging devices, 35% of clinical IoT devices, and 30% of clinical lab devices that all have at least one known exploited vulnerability. With so many known vulnerabilities and limited time and resources for security teams to adequately address them all in a timely fashion, it’s only a matter of time before a vulnerability could be exploited and severely interfere with mission critical clinical workflows.
Now that you understand the stakes, you might be wondering how to improve healthcare cybersecurity in your critical environment . There are many important steps your organization can take to ensure good clinical cyber hygiene, from fingerprinting all medical devices in the network to informing medical and IoT device performance , but the most effective way to protect your organization is to utilize a comprehensive cybersecurity platform that protects all cyber-physical systems (CPS).
In order to understand exactly what to look for in a CPS protection platform, it’s first key to know the threats your organization may be up against. Let’s explore the most pressing threats to healthcare cybersecurity.
Emerging Threats in Healthcare Cybersecurity
As technology evolves, so do the tactics used by cybercriminals. These threats exploit the healthcare industry’s growing dependence on technology. In response, HDOs need to safeguard their systems, devices, and data. Here are the primary threat tactics emphasizing why cybersecurity continues to be a challenge in healthcare:
Network-connected Medical Devices: Medical devices connected to the internet, and to other devices on the network, can be vulnerable to cyberattacks. If they are running outdated software, contain known vulnerabilities, lack security features, or are accessed by manufacturers or biomeds using less secure remote access tools, they may be vulnerable to cyber threats.
Building Automation systems (BAS): BAS includes heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) controls, elevators, and many other crucial mechanical or electrical equipment that healthcare facilities rely on. Should any of these systems be compromised, it can pose serious health risks to anyone inside the facility.
Ransomware: Ransomware attacks involve encryption of the victim’s data by hackers who demand a ransom for its release. In a healthcare environment, such attacks can be devastating as they can lead to inaccessibility of critical patient information, disruption of care delivery, and substantial financial costs.
Supply Chain Attacks: This method is utilized by attackers to infiltrate your environment through an outside partner or third-party provider with access to your devices and data. As healthcare organizations increasingly rely on third-party vendors for services like data management and telehealth, the risk of supply chain attacks increases, potentially leading to disruptions to healthcare critical services.
Cloud Compromise: As more healthcare data is moved to the cloud for ease of access and cost-effectiveness, the cloud environment has become a lucrative target for cybercriminals. The compromise of cloud-based storage and services can result in devastating data breaches, leading to violation of patient privacy
Phishing: This system of tricking individuals into revealing sensitive information like usernames and passwords through disguised emails or other communications can allow malicious actors to gain unauthorized access to electronic health record systems, leading to disruption of patient care and expensive HIPAA violation fines.
Why Does Cybersecurity Continue to Be a Problem in Healthcare?
With so many recent high-profile cyber incidents and the subsequent release of regulatory requirements meant to combat future ones, it begs the question ‘why does cybersecurity continue to be a problem in healthcare?’ The answer is complicated.
While many HDOs understand the importance of taking measures against cyber attacks, they are also up against financial and staffing constraints. With limited resources and budget for cybersecurity, many organizations lack the expertise to protect medical devices, leaving healthcare systems unprepared for one reason or another.
When it comes to protecting the medical devices and BAS in healthcare environments, there comes a specific set of challenges including:
Lack of device visibility: If you don’t know every device in your network, then you don’t know whether everything is fully protected. This is why having complete asset visibility is so crucial. But many of the OT devices that are on healthcare networks, including clinical devices and BAS, can be difficult to profile using traditional methods. It requires a comprehensive solution that employs multiple collection methods to ensure full device visibility.
Complex regulatory landscape: Healthcare systems must maintain compliance with different regulatory bodies and standards to offer the best environment of care and ensure all devices are working safely and correctly. Adhering to these regulations and proving compliance can be difficult without the right tools.
Legacy devices: Most of the devices in the healthcare environment are meant to last many years, but this can make protecting them for cyber attacks difficult. Legacy devices often were not created with cybersecurity in mind, have outdated operating systems, or could by near end of life and require replacement in order to maintain network security.
Digital transformation: The security posture of HDOs has shifted and previously isolated environments are now connected. Convergence between information technology (IT) with OT systems has created greater interconnectivity which results in an expanded attack surface and opportunities for cyber criminals.
These are some of the many reasons why having a CPS protection platform is so critical - it can fill the gaps in your current security team, continuously monitor for threats, and provide support for operational efficiency, freeing up resources and streamlining workflows to help your operations run more efficiently.
Existing Regulations and Guidelines - HIPAA, HITRUST
Protecting against cyber attacks in the healthcare industry is a top priority for regulatory bodies and governments. HDOs must demonstrate compliance with these regulations and guidelines to maintain accreditation and continue to provide care to patients. However, many of these regulations are complex, many times difficult to understand, and costly to comply with. Some of the top regulations and guidelines that improve cybersecurity for healthcare organizations include:
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA): HIPAA was enacted to protect the healthcare information privacy of patients, it also helps the healthcare industry control costs, and streamline health insurance practices. In healthcare cybersecurity, organizations work to protect patient data privacy in order to stay in compliance with HIPAA.
Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST): This framework aims to help organizations comply with regulations when handling sensitive data and manage potential risk. Designed to be scalable and adaptable as new threats and standards arise, it was originally created by healthcare and IT experts to combat threats to patient data.
Strengthening Healthcare Cyber Security Act: This proposed legislation is focused on creating resources and guidelines to help healthcare institutions strengthen their cybersecurity. This includes developing a healthcare sector-specific cybersecurity framework, providing guidance to smaller healthcare providers, and enhancing information sharing among healthcare organizations.
The goal of these regulations and proposed acts is to establish minimum standards for healthcare cybersecurity, aiming to protect patient privacy, provide access controls, guide organizations towards secure data transmission, and foster an environment that regularly monitors and manages cybersecurity risks. Adherence to these standards goes a long way in fending off cyber threats and ensuring a secure environment.
How to Ensure Compliance and Comprehensive Protection
Staying compliant with these regulations and frameworks often starts with implementing a CPS protection platform that secures your devices and gives your organization peace of mind. But with so many cybersecurity solutions claiming to protect HDOs, it’s difficult to know exactly how to find a comprehensive solution that offers protection for every aspect of the healthcare environment. In order to adequately protect your organization, the right platform should offer the following core solutions.
1. Asset Management
An accurate asset inventory is crucial to managing all the clinical devices in a healthcare environment. But maintaining a complete inventory can be labor-intensive and time consuming, leaving HDOs to find better solutions for daily workflow management and to make device lifecycle decisions. Tracking preventative maintenance is key to maintaining compliance, but manual efforts can be cumbersome and time-intensive.
Healthcare organizations looking to improve efficiency in asset management should implement cybersecurity solutions that deliver advanced details about a device’s IP address, serial number, operating system, and manufacturer automatically. This dynamic inventory reconciliation can track the physical location of devices and allow for streamlined operations and risk reduction. By integrating with an organization’s CMMS/CMDB, asset management can streamline device and lifecycle management workflows.
2. Exposure Management
As critical as it is to identify exposures, it’s equally important to evaluate the potential risks of an asset and assess the impact it could have on your operations. Having the tools to appropriately prioritize and mitigate the risk starts with developing a comprehensive exposure management strategy that employs a multi-faceted data collection method, rather than traditionally passive approaches. This begins with safely and efficiently profiling devices, assessing the business impact of possible exposures, validating, and ultimately employing remediations to decrease risk and support security operations.
3. Network Protection
A solution that streamlines the tedious process of segmenting healthcare networks can be an enormous timesaver. Select a solution that provides recommended segmentation policies that can easily be enforced in your existing infrastructure. With continuous monitoring to better understand what “normal” device communications look like on your network, you can establish a baseline to be better prepared to identify abnormal network activity. Finally, integrating with NAC, FWs, and EDRs can ensure enforcement.
4. Threat Detection
When healthcare organizations lack clinical context they can have challenges understanding the full scope of threats. But staying on top of threats is essential to preventing disruptions to patient care. The key to understanding the complex workflows present in clinical environments is utilizing multiple detection engines to seamlessly profile all devices, communications, and processes in the network. Target a CPS protection platform that provides a portfolio of threat capabilities that integrate with your existing techstack to provide clinical context to your current IT security strategy.
5. Operational Efficiency
Operational efficiency may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of healthcare cybersecurity, but the strongest platforms should offer functionality that improves your operations and business outcomes alongside those that protect the devices in your network. Understanding your devices’ usage and lifecycle can prevent your clinical team from utilizing devices that are nearing end of life and can signal assets that may have vulnerabilities. With key insights fed directly from your cybersecurity solution to your CMMS/CMDB, you can make better business decisions all while protecting your devices and streamlining daily workflows.
Maximize Your Healthcare Cybersecurity With Claroty xDome
Healthcare organizations must prioritize cybersecurity to adequately protect their systems, devices, and sensitive data — and most importantly, to provide a safe environment for their patients. Managing this complex field can be challenging, but by understanding emerging threats, abiding by regulations, and applying leading healthcare cybersecurity solutions, HDOs can significantly fortify their environment against cyber threats.
Creating a strong cybersecurity foundation that protects the medical devices and building automation systems in your healthcare environment starts with employing a robust CPS protection platform, like Claroty xDome, which provides actionable insights that reduce cyber risk through asset management, exposure management, network protection, threat detection, and operational efficiency.
If your organization would like to learn more about how Claroty xDome could fortify your healthcare cybersecurity, get in touch with our team for a demo.
