Reasons Why Healthcare Industry is the Biggest Target for Cyber Attacks

Recent times have shown the growing implementation of technology in many industries and sectors. The Healthcare sector has gracefully embraced this advent of technological progress. The aim of embracing advanced technology, including AI, is to enhance the patients’ treatment and care by better diagnosis. But has the sector gained only good from this technological progress? NO!

Just as the coins have two sides, technological progress, regardless of the sector or industry, has the repercussions of its implementation too. In the healthcare industry, it is the vulnerability of healthcare data.

Every day, there is a greater risk of healthcare data security owing to the revolutionary implementation of digitization in the healthcare sector. As per the recent stats, In 2021, an average of 1.95 healthcare data breaches of 500 or more records were reported daily.

Why Healthcare Industry Is The Biggest Target Of Cyber Attacks?

The above stats clearly show that healthcare industry data is at constant risk. But what is it about healthcare information that is so attractive, though? Let us find out.

The digitization of healthcare information

Recently, we have moved from physical data collection to digital records to keep it secure, accurate, up-to-date, and easily shareable and make it unperishable. That’s the bright side, and we have benefited from it tremendously until we realized data breaches.

In terms of security, we have created a great pitfall by making the data easily available to hackers. It is where it all started, and the further reason contributes to making the healthcare industry the biggest target of hackers.

High Value Of Patient Information In Black Market

The thing that is valued the most is stolen the most!

In this era of digitization, data values the most. Each hospital, big or small, has the treasure hidden that is patient’s data. Hackers’ financial incentives for selling this information on the black market are sometimes unimaginable. The reason for this incentive is that the information not only comprises the patient’s medical history but their bank and credit card details, social security numbers and more. It is the primary reason that lured the hackers to target the healthcare industry.

Legacy technology is to blame

This nation’s critical infrastructure is not even technological updated to shield itself from these advanced entities. Though medical technology has been advanced, the healthcare industry struggled to keep pace with it. This evidence of it can be found in the legacy systems used by the facilities.

It is when the healthcare App Development Company comes to play. These companies provide them with software and systems with advanced security features.

Having a secure system is not the end of the story; as long as the system is in use, it would require updates to stay secure despite technological advances. This way, the healthcare infrastructure can take a step further toward data security.

Medical devices are highly prone to attacks

Why? Because they are the easiest entry points for the hacker to get into the system. There is a huge number of medical devices used for a variety of purposes like ECG monitors, defibrillators, x-ray machines and more. Unlike computers, their medical devices are not facilitated with advanced security parameters. It makes them the hacker’s entry points to target the connect server from where they can access the confidential data they seek.

Not just that, the hacker, once getting into the system, can even cause more havoc by shutting down these medical devices or, worst, taking control over them. Aftermath of which would be interrupted treatments which can often be life-threatening.

Unprepared Healthcare Staff

The soldiers of the nation’s critical infrastructure are the healthcare staff. The time, budget and resource constraints are the hurdles in making the staff well versed with cyber security and risk mitigation best practices. The soldiers can only protect the territory when they are aware of the existence of potential threats.

Educate the staff regarding the What is Cloud Security, identifying the risks and best practices to eliminate the chances of data breaches. The healthcare facilities can conduct various training sessions for their staff to make them aware of the data breach’s repercussions.

The facilities must request their Healthcare App Development Company to add extra layers of security. It can be further enhanced with the cybersecurity solutions like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Single sign-on(SSO).

In a nutshell, the healthcare industry is at risk. It is high time to allocate a special budget to invest in cyber security solutions. This way, your enterprise can protect the patients’ data from cybercriminals. Each enterprise with this implementation can strengthen the cybersecurity of the healthcare infrastructure of your nation as a whole.

Author Bio:

Mary Smith is the content manager of Excellent Webworld. She has pursued her passion for technical writing and spent over five years writing the content for information technology niches. She is a tech nerd, which has helped her add a personal touch to her writing.