Speaker: Zach Rutz
Why is the healthcare industry more susceptible to data breaches than other industries?
The health care industry is particularly susceptible to data breaches due to a variety of factors. The first and probably the largest being the actual value of the health data. With millions of records of PHI (protected health information) and PII live within systems. Even one business can be a very attractive target for a cybercriminals. The healthcare industry is also a very complex ecosystem with many different businesses and entities at play, hospitals, clinics, insurers, and every other third-party vendor in the space lends itself to multiple different points of entry for any one cyberattacker.
What can HealthTech companies do to mitigate the risk of data breaches?
Thankfully, there are many actions that you can take to mitigate the risk of data breaches. The first being investing in security. So this is investing in resources both from a people perspective and a technology perspective to make sure that you are adequately prepared for the latest and largest cyber threats. The second being employee training, phishing still remains to be a top attack method and successful attack method within the healthcare industry and making sure that all employees are traine anyone that really touches systems and interacts with systems—should be part of that training population. The last being third-party vetting.
Looking to the future, what is your advice to HealthTech leaders?
If I could give advice to HealthTech leaders, it would certainly be to prioritize cybersecurity. Definitely a common theme, but do recognize it is an integral part to the patient experience and to patient security. Ensuring that patient records are secured confidential and stay private. It's also a key piece of an organization's reputation, either good or bad. So any one cyber breach could take a very significant hit to that reputation. The next would be stay informed. So, cybersecurity is constantly evolving with new vulnerabilities quite literally every day. And if you're on the forefront of that news, it'll allow you to more adequately prepare resources and strategies to mitigate those cyber risks. The last would be invest in talent. So an organization is, is only as good as its people and ensuring that there are highly skilled individuals in those in those positions of security will ensure that you're better prepared for these new cyber threats. And all of this comes together to ensure that we're maintaining the trust of our patients continuing to provide quality service and also ensuring that we're protecting that patient data that we're trying to secure
