Healthcare is a prime target for hackers. Organizations in this field store a wealth of patient information: dates of birth, insurance billing information, addresses, etc. A cyberattack can cause significant damage by perpetuating fraud or revealing people’s personal health details.
Three types of cyberattacks are common to the healthcare sector: ransomware, phishing, and data breaches. The good news is that when you have the right tools in place, you can mitigate these attacks before they spiral out of control. Security information and event management solutions (SIEMs) enhance threat detection, improve incident investigation, simplify regulatory compliance, and centralize visibility into network security.
Cyberattacks have several negative impacts for healthcare organizations:
In the wake of a cyberattack, patients’ health is at risk. Let’s say a hospital is struck by ransomware. Healthcare professionals can’t access patients’ files. They might have to delay life-saving procedures. And without access to lab results, clinicians can’t make decisions about treatment plans.
Cyberattacks can be fatal, too. A 2023 study reported that 23% of hospitals experiencing a cyberattack saw an increase in patient mortality rates due to loss of records and/or delays in treatment.
When a cyberattack strikes, IT staff must spend hours, days, or even longer picking up the pieces. These attacks affect critical systems and lead to downtime. Experts estimate the cost of downtime in hospitals to be $7,900 per minute.
Healthcare organizations operate in a strict regulatory environment. They’re subject to the Healthcare Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which protects the privacy and safety of patient information.
Under HIPAA, healthcare organizations can pay massive fines for healthcare breaches. The 2023 penalties for HIPAA violations were $137 per patient record. Even if a hacker stole a small number of patient records, that’s still a hefty fine.
The cost of cyberattacks also affects how people think about a healthcare organization. They lose trust in the organization.
That trust has a financial impact. When people feel they can’t trust a healthcare provider, they’re more likely to turn to the competition if it’s available. Loss of trust translates into loss of revenue.
SIEM platforms play a vital role in preventing cyberattacks in healthcare. This solution combines security information management and security event management to uncover potential attacks.
Here’s how it works: an SIEM solution collects and analyzes security data from a variety of sources such as firewalls, servers, cloud platforms, network devices, and third-party tools.
Because the data collected comes from so many sources, the solution has to standardize the data into a common source for analysis.
The SIEM solution applies predefined rules and algorithms to identify patterns and relationships across data points. For example, if there were several failed login attempts, the SIEM solution could see those attempts were coming from a suspicious IP address.
Threats are an unfortunate, yet ever-present part of the IT landscape. SIEM solutions continuously monitor data streams for anomalies, suspicious behaviors, or known indicators of compromise (IoCs) to keep organizations safe. When they identify a potential threat, these solutions generate an alert based on severity and urgency.
Every event receives a risk score based on pre-defined events, machine learning insights, and threat intelligence. Security operations (known as SecOps) can then focus on high-priority threats and avoid wasting time on false positives.
SIEM solutions store historical logs and incident data so SecOps teams can trace the source of attacks, analyze the timeline and scope of an incident, and identify root causes and vulnerabilities. In addition, these solutions generate regulatory compliance reports for a deeper understanding of security performance.
SecOps is the collaboration between security and information technology (IT) operations. The goal of this collaboration is to strengthen network, system, and data security. When people use the term “SecOps,” they’re referring not just to the team, but to the policies, procedures, and technologies to protect organizations.
Why do security and IT ops teams need to collaborate? IT ops tend to prioritize speed, while security teams want to make sure they reduce risk and test rigorously. SecOps balances agility with security.
When a cyberattack hits, there’s no time to waste. A SecOps team must spring into action to stop the attack before the damage spirals out of control.
The SecOps team is built on collaboration. As such, any SecOps response must be coordinated. Team members from the security and IT operations must work together to ensure that they can fix problems quickly.
However, these teams must also be proactive. When they receive notification of a valid security threat, they must act on it. Being proactive about potential threats saves organizations time, money, and headaches.
To improve cybersecurity in healthcareorganizations should put an SIEM solution in place and form a SecOps team.
The SecOps team will be the frontline of defense against cyber threats. They’ll respond to attacks quickly to mitigate the damage and help healthcare organizations get back to business as usual.
An SIEM solution is critical to SecOps teams. It continuously monitors IT assets and infrastructure for threats, alerting security teams to potential threats and providing insights into their severity and urgency.
Because SIEM solutions send real-time alerts, SecOps teams never have to worry about missing something important. And because SIEM solutions grade threats based on their potential impact, SecOps teams don’t waste time responding to false positives.
There are a few things SecOps can do to enhance its performance and ensure it can act swiftly when a crisis strikes:
Protecting healthcare organizations from cyber threats requires vigilance and a layered approach. The first layer is an SIEM solution to identify and prioritize threats. The second layer is a robust SecOps team that evaluates and responds to those threats. By taking a layered approach, healthcare organizations are better positioned to defend themselves against threats and keep their patient data safe.
