Leon Barretto

Healthcare organizations invest significant resources in cybersecurity. And as with their counterparts in other industries, healthcare IT leaders know their jobs involve highly sensitive data that, if compromised, could jeopardize staff and customer privacy and therefore requires a cybersecurity assessment. A cybersecurity risk assessment identifies, assesses, and implements key security controls in applications. It also focuses on preventing application security defects and vulnerabilities. Carrying out a risk assessment allows an organization to view the application portfolio holistically from an attacker’s perspective. It supports managers in making informed resource allocation, tooling, and security control implementation decisions

The guide identifies several types to consider:

• Network assessments to review your IT infrastructure and identify risks that might arise from insecure network configurations or outdated software across traditional or wireless networks
• Application assessments that look for vulnerabilities in the functionality of applications that run on your network — a service particularly valuable for organizations that develop their own applications
• Advisory assessments for evaluating infrastructure security from a higher level; these take a holistic view of your complete security program to analyze strategy, best practices and gaps to address

Brutal stories of ransomware attacks on small medical practices have peppered the news in recent months. A Wall Street Journal article published in October cited the particularly crippling effects on small systems; some practices have even been forced to close.

The Indian healthcare sector is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the country and is estimated to reach a market size of USD 320 Million by 2022. Along with supportive government policies, accelerated technology adoption and leveraging emerging tech innovations, across the country, is one of the key drivers of growth for the sector. The pandemic has further accelerated digital adoption across smaller, non-urban health service providers, making it accessible to the masses.

Hackers are opportunists and will often target the practice or facility with the lowest level of security. Cyber-attacks and frauds ranging from identity theft, financial fraud, malware, and phishing, to even serious threats like hostage situations in healthcare institutions and compromise on intellectual property and confidential research findings, etc. have been severely plaguing the Indian healthcare industry. Experts in the cybersecurity field often recommend a practice conduct a cybersecurity assessment. This will look at all the organization’s digital entry points, and then the cybersecurity firm will do a penetration test, where it acts like hackers would and looks for weak points. Under such circumstances, it is vital to ensure the process and the devices are secure and not vulnerable to foreign cyber-attacks.