7 September 2023 Blog 0

Why is healthcare a target for cyberattacks?

Cybersecurity is something we hear more and more in the healthcare world. In our previous blog article, our Director of Clinical Support and IT Services Delos Wilbur has reported some facts about why medical data should be protected.

But why cyber-criminals are targeting the healthcare industry? Let’s find out in the below article!

Why healthcare?

Healthcare is one of the biggest industries on the planet. People’s lives from all over the world are impacted in different ways and this results in a massive amount of data to be stored and processed.

Private patients’ information is worth billions for criminals and hospitals are already struggling with financial demands. This is why they should not deal with ransomware too. According to the US Health and Human Services office 2023 report, healthcare data breaches have doubled in the last 3 years.

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Now you may think: “Aren’t there any more profitable businesses to target?”. The answer is YES. However, even if healthcare business is not worth the same as commercial banking or insurance companies, we need to consider the balance between the effort of the attack and the profit generated.

Medical devices must follow very restrictive rules in terms of regulatory. This unfortunately results in slower development of products and so, slower applicable cyber remediations. Also, after the pandemic more and more professionals are working remotely, and this introduce additional complexity for the IT teams who are supporting a very high number of devices in the hospital.

Protection is obviously the key factor when implementing cybersecurity, but let’s not forget that those systems need to be used to treat patients or manage their data. Too much complexity may result in daily disruptions which will affect user experience.

What would be a balanced solution?

There is no “perfect” solution when we talk about cybersecurity. The right question is: “What is the BEST solution for MY environment?”

Contacting a cybersecurity expert and running a risk analysis is the first step. This will highlight the possible entry points for attacks.

Investment in IT security is a difficult discussion, that’s why a costs-benefits analysis should be run right after the risk analysis. This will compare the potential investment vs. the cost of being completely down due to an attack.

Mercurius can help in this entire process by offering cybersecurity risk analysis, costs comparisons and being the IT partner for your department by providing full infrastructures or consulting services to help your IT department implementing remediations. Please visit our website or contact your local representative.

Let’s see some stats…