Healthcare , Industry Specific , Security Operations

Juggling Cyber Challenges, Evolving Threats in Healthcare

While cyberthreats facing healthcare continue to evolve, security leaders must juggle a variety of cyber and related tech challenges, said Shawn Parker and Quincy Raybon, IT leaders at two medical care providers, and Ram Vaidyanathan of IT management solutions provider ManageEngine.

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"Top of mind lately has been operating system updates, firmware updates - on everything from access points to Zebra printers to trying to make sure we're watching our attack vectors," said Parker, director of IT at Elder Outreach, which provides services to elderly patients in Louisiana.

"We also need to keep up with frameworks and regulations like NIST and CISA controls and HIPAA and HITECH - and then try to implement policies and controls to follow those," he said in a video panel discussion with Information Security Media Group.

The threat of disruptive ransomware and other cybersecurity attacks is a particularly worrisome concern for healthcare IT and security leaders, said Raybon, vice president of IT operations at Regency Integrated Health Services, which runs 60 skilled nursing facilities in Texas. "It's the risk of losing access to either the data or the medical devices needed to care for our patients," he said.

"We're here to provide one service, and that is to care for our residents and the environment designed to help them with their various clinical needs," Raybon said. "It is our duty to protect against any cyberthreat that can interfere with that."

Cybercriminals often appear to target healthcare sector firms based on the type and size of the facility, as well as the kinds of services it offers, said Vaidyanathan, chief IT security evangelist at ManageEngine, a division of enterprise IT management vendor Zoho Corp.

"Entities like hospitals, especially those with critical care units - organizations like trauma centers and intensive care units - can be prime targets now," he said. "They can't afford downtime, and that makes them more likely to pay a ransom," he said.

"Attackers want to increase or maximize the chances that the organization will pay the ransom," he said.

In this video interview with Information Security Media Group, Parker, Raybon and Vaidyanathan also discuss:

• Evolving cyberthreat trends;
• Top cybersecurity challenges faced by specialty healthcare providers;
• Critical cybersecurity best practices and technologies to help address those challenges.

Raybon has more than 15 years of IT services experience spanning engineering, security and service delivery.

Parker has 18 years of experience in the IT industry. Many of those years have been in the long-term healthcare field.

Vaidyanathan writes on the technology sector at large and how it adapts to the changing needs of cybersecurity and privacy concerns.