Cybersecurity: Connected Hospital and E-Health | Antivirus Software

Indian health establishments have become the preferred targets of cybercriminals. In question? Personal data from medical records sell for a high price on the Dark Web … and hospitals are far from being adequately protected from an IT security point of view.

Indeed, the digitization of files was done very quickly without the security keeping pace.

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the healthcare and healthcare industries, cyber attacks are increasing alarmingly. And it will only get worse if nothing is done because the medical field is advancing quickly, very quickly from a technological point of view.

Except, as the number of healthcare organizations equipping themselves with IoT solutions increases, so do security incidents due to vulnerabilities in connected devices. Due to outdated software still present in some establishments, large-scale attacks like the WannaCry and NotPetya ransomware have already done countless damage.

Why Are Hospitals an Easy Target for Hackers?

Although many efforts have been made to strengthen the IT security of healthcare establishments, they are not fast enough for hackers, always on the cutting edge.

Only 6% of the total IT budget of healthcare organizations is devoted to protecting information and IoTs, even though these are structures considered “at-risk” in terms of cybersecurity. After all, the lives of patients are at stake.

If cybersecurity does not evolve fast enough, it is also because the sector faces several obstacles: the lack of qualified personnel in cybersecurity, the lack of financial resources, too many workstations, servers, PCs, etc. ever more sophisticated attacks.

What Are the Consequences of a Cyber Attack?

They are first of all human: imagine that the information concerning a patient treated for cancer is inaccessible or false? It would endanger his life. Ditto for insulin pumps or surgical robots ...

The impact of a cyber attack is also financial: a hack costs a hospital a fortune because it is forced to reduce or even stop its activity. Result? Millions of loss every day. This is why some structures pay the ransom, moreover: what does paying ₹13,22,505.00 when you lose a hundred times more each day blocked? Unfortunately, it is not always certain that after paying the hospital will find its data intact.

As for hackers, theft and then sale on the Dark Web can bring in ₹30800.00! at this cost, it is not so much the contents of the stolen files, but rather the quantity that matters to the hackers. Certain large pharmaceutical groups or certain states pay even more to recover these files in order to build even more targeted communication strategies from this information.

Better protecting the health information of India is, therefore, a major issue sufficient for the Ministry of Health to think about the establishment of a Cybersecurity Conference in Health, normally for this fall 2020. In the meantime, our former Minister of Health India launched at the end of November a national information campaign aimed at hospital staff so that they make “digital hygiene” a real reflex.

Before you get surrender by the internet demon install free antivirus software to prevent your data.