A strong cybersecurity stance has become a major concern of health care leaders in recent years as massive systems suffer data breaches and cybercriminal organizations attack health care organizations in the hope of financial payout or harming a geopolitical rival.
To learn more about the complex world of cybersecurity in healthcare, Becker interviewed Stoddard Manikin, director of information security at Atlanta Children’s Health.
Q: Do pediatric hospitals face unique cybersecurity challenges?
Stoddard Manikin: Children’s hospitals must maintain the same level of cybersecurity protection as any adult healthcare system that connects to the internet.
One unique aspect is that pediatric patient data can be considered more valuable to hackers who plan to commit identity theft. This is because many pediatric patients have not yet established a credit history, so their identity can be used to open new lines of credit without notifying the victim for many years until they reach adulthood. In addition, children can often be more medically vulnerable, raising the need for systems to be available.
Q: Is there special A cybercriminal organization, in your opinion, poses the greatest threat to public health?
SM: We face numerous opponents with different motives. There is no single criminal organization that poses the greatest threat, but ransomware as a category poses the greatest threat. This type of attack can lead to a double threat, including significant disruption to availability and data leakage. Even for an organization that pays a ransom, there is still a very real risk that criminals can sell your data and “get double paid” or simply expose the data. This is further complicated by the fact that even less sophisticated cybercriminals can carry out successful ransomware attacks.
Question. How do you prepare your employees for a potential ransomware attack?
SM: As in healthcare, the most important step in preparation is prevention. For regular users, phishing awareness training with occasional mock emails is one of the best prevention methods available. When symptoms appear, employees can act as human sensors in your overall ransomware detection program, so it is also important to educate employees on how to report potential cybersecurity incidents such as phishing messages or strange computer behavior.
Additional training is needed for IT staff as these individuals must be prepared to prevent and handle ransomware incidents. For example, Privileged Access employees require additional training to make sure they know how to secure these credentials. They also need to fully understand the procedures for responding to ransomware incidents should they occur.
Q: How can a cyber attack disrupt nursing?
SM: From diverting ambulances to the emergency room to downtime of key IT systems, the availability of care is a major disruption. Operations can be undone. Clinics may be closed. Lab systems can be turned off, making results unavailable. Blood types cannot be checked in the EHR. Paper charts may be necessary and many providers are less familiar with non-electronic patient workflows, slowing down patient care.
Q: What cybersecurity innovations are you most interested in?
SM: Cybersecurity tools generate vast amounts of data—more than a human can quickly and accurately view. Tools that automate data matching and response coordination multiply the power for your security teams.
Question: How do you see role of Chief Information Security Officer health development in the next decade?
SM: Healthcare CIOs have already begun to shift from a focus on compliance to a greater focus on cybersecurity. In the short term, healthcare CIOs need to adapt to cloud IT trends. In the long term, the next shift is likely to focus on device security, especially medical devices and IoT devices, and a focus on securing healthcare operating technologies as they expand. For example, we are building a new hospital and installing a huge number of networked building management systems with appropriate sensors. This increases the attack surface – generating more data to monitor, more devices to protect, and more potential points of failure for our concern. CIOs in healthcare need to address this issue.