HEALTHCARE CYBERSECURITY

Healthcare In Cybersecurity

Nettitude has been a trusted cybersecurity healthcare partner of choice since 2003. It works with an extensive list of private and public organisations in the sector. With its deep understanding and experience delivering best practice info-security policies within the healthcare industry, you can be sure that Nettitude will place your organisation’s valuable assets such as Protected Health Information (PHI), patient records, Intellectual Property (IP), and research at the centre of its care.

Cyber Awareness in the Healthcare Industry

In the healthcare industry, it’s important to be aware of threats, data management, and risk management. Nettitude outlines the following areas of concern:

1. Inside Threats From Employees

If your healthcare workers aren’t aware of basic cybersecurity procedures, they could make your network vulnerable to a breach despite the presence of a hardened network perimeter.

• Spear phishing – educate your employees on spear phishing campaigns – where the goal is to get your unsuspecting staff to click on malicious attachments within an email.
• Ransomware & malware – create a policy that does not permit mobile devices to connect to the organisation’s Wi-Fi or hardware.

Such risks can lead to the introduction of ransomware, and malware which may collect user credentials or even expose a network to an attacker.

2. Data Classification Management

Targeted cyber-attacks are challenging to identify and stop. However, if your data is correctly managed, reducing the damage a breach causes is possible. A few things you can do to help this include:

Reducing breach exposure – when hackers successfully breach an organisation, they often target the Protected Health Information (PHI) it owns. Whether or not they will reach their objective data usually depends on how classified the information is and the level of its accessibility to users.

Understanding data – an organisation that understands the ‘where and how and why’ of its sensitive data cycle will be more equipped to protect itself against a security breach.

3. Defending The Network

Protect your organisation by adopting a multi-layered approach to security in healthcare. You can ensure your healthcare network is cyber secure by:

Creating an in-depth defence strategy – each layer of security defence protects the organisation and slows down would-be attackers, often resulting in some hackers moving on to easier targets to breach. In healthcare cybersecurity, this can mean the difference between a threat actor accessing private records and them remaining secure. 

Understanding that firewalls alone are not enough – an updated and well-configured firewall security system will prevent simple attacks, but more sophisticated attacks will penetrate the network. Employees may also introduce security dangers from inside the company, something which most firewalls cannot prevent

Introducing security techniques – regular employee security awareness training, as well as encrypting data such as PHI databases and applications can limit how exposed you are to cyber attackers. It will also help secure your organisation against evolving technologies in the cyber field. 

Using encryption – adding encryption could prevent a hacker, who may have already gained some level of access to the network, from gaining access to further data. 

Why Partner With Cybersecurity Firm Nettitude?

Mitigate Cyber Risk in Healthcare

Nettitude helps its healthcare clients to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals, providing a first-line cyber defence and response to all types of incidents, so they stay resilient against cyber-attacks. It employs sophisticated testing to mitigate a healthcare organisation’s risk of a breach or an attack at every level.

Nettitude’s Cyber Credentials

You can trust Nettitude as your cybersecurity healthcare partner – we are a trusted member of CREST and one of the world’s first accredited CBEST testing and intelligence partners for the Bank of England.

Research & Development

Through its research and development (R&D) as well as active client work, Nettitude’s dedicated R&D team analyses and studies threat actor behaviour, gaining greater insight into the specific threat landscape within the healthcare sector. Take a peek at Nettitude’s latest Zero-day discoveries through Nettitude Labs and subscribe to receive our most recent findings as they are publically released.