Armis, the unified asset visibility and security platform provider, had a new survey to investigate the status of cybersecurity in the healthcare sector and the security challenges that healthcare companies are now facing.
The study was done by Censuswide involving 400 IT experts at healthcare institutions all over the United States, and 2,000 American patients to acquire their ideas on cybersecurity and information breaches in the healthcare industry.
The survey established the growing cyber threat, with 85% of respondents stating cyber risk has expanded during the past 12 months. Ransomware groups have attacked the healthcare field in the past 12 months, and a lot of those attacks were successful. 58% of the participating IT specialists mentioned their corporation had encountered a ransomware attack in the last year.
13% of IT security professionals consider ransomware attacks as a source of concern, stating the majority are convinced that they could bring back data when an attack occurs. Nevertheless, data breaches that cause the loss of patient data were a big concern, with 52% of IT experts ranking data loss as a number one problem, with attacks on hospital operations considered as a key issue by 23% of healthcare IT professionals.
Guarding against cyberattacks is getting even more challenging because of the growing attack surface. Armis states there are already 430 million linked healthcare devices around the world, and that number will keep on rising. When questioned concerning the riskiest devices and systems, building systems like HVAC were the major issue s 54% of IT experts rated them as the main cybersecurity risk. Imaging machines were ranked as among the riskiest by 43% of survey participants, and then medicine dispensing devices (40%), check-in kiosks (39%), and vital sign tracking machines (33%). Though there is concern regarding the safety of these systems and medical gadgets, 95% of IT experts mentioned they assumed their interconnected systems and devices were patched and using the most up-to-date software program.
The growth in cyberattacks in the healthcare field is affecting healthcare decisions. 75% of IT specialists stated the latest attacks had a powerful effect on decision making and 86% of survey respondents mentioned their company had assigned a CISO; nonetheless, only 52% of survey participants mentioned their firm was putting more than enough finances to take care of IT safety.
The survey of patients showed 33 % had become the victim of a healthcare cyberattack, and though more or less one-half of patients (49%) stated they would change healthcare company if it suffered a ransomware attack, lots of patients are not aware of the scope of the latest cyberattacks and how often they are currently being documented. In 2018, healthcare data breach reports were sent at a rate of 1 each day. In the last 12 months, 7 months showed data breach reports of over 2 every day.
Even with comprehensive media reports regarding healthcare data breaches and vulnerabilities in healthcare devices, 61% of potential patients mentioned they didn’t learn about any healthcare cyberattacks during the past two years, evidently showing a lot of patients are uninformed of the threat of ransomware as well as other cyberattacks. Nonetheless, patients know the consequences those attacks might have, with 73% of prospective patients knowing a cyberattack can affect the quality of health care they are given.
When potential patients were asked concerning their privacy issues, 52% stated they were troubled that a cyberattack would stop hospital operations and will likely impact patient care, and 37% mentioned they were bothered about the confidentiality of information accessible via websites.
There undoubtedly seem to be trust concerns, as merely 23% of prospective patients claimed they relied on their healthcare service provider with their sensitive personal information. In comparison, 30% stated they depended on their best friend with that data.