IoT cybersecurity in healthcare: How it can be improved with SOAR?

Healthcare institutions are prime targets for cyber attackers. But that’s not exactly news, is it?

It’s a well-known fact that the introduction of IoT yielded new vulnerabilities that are strongly felt in the healthcare industry. And this only cemented healthcare cybersecurity as an intrinsic asset of every healthcare organization, as it’s common knowledge that maintaining data privacy is paramount for every healthcare institution. Because if they fail to do so, they risk facing disastrous ramifications resulting in massive data breaches.

Today, the healthcare industry is increasingly struggling with data breaches. And that’s because cyber attackers are becoming more and more aware of the value of medical data.

This all leads to the conclusion that healthcare cybersecurity safety must remain a priority in 2021. And in this blog post, we’ll show you how healthcare institutions can elevate their cybersecurity posture, and explain how SOAR plays a monumental role in enhancing healthcare cybersecurity.

Healthcare cybersecurity statistics in 2020

How vulnerable are healthcare institutions?

In order to become familiar with the gravity of the danger cyber attackers pose to the healthcare industry, let’s look at some of the most notable healthcare cybersecurity statistics in 2020:

• 89% of healthcare organizations experienced a data breach in the past two years

• 100% of IoT devices containing sensitive medical data are vulnerable to cyber attacks

• 55% of healthcare organizations in the US have faced cyber attacks

• 82% of healthcare organizations admit that cybersecurity is their biggest concern

Plus, on top of the continuously increasing number of cyber attacks, the skill shortage phenomenon is adding an additional layer of worries for healthcare organizations. As a matter of fact, 27% of healthcare organizations have failed to find a qualified cyber security professional to overlook their cyber security.

Moreover, 45% of healthcare organizations are not satisfied with the knowledge of their cybersecurity professionals.

To put this in perspective, healthcare institutions are left with scarcely any qualified security professionals. And they are now required to do more with fewer resources. It comes as no surprise that healthcare institutions raised their cybersecurity budget from 10% in 2018 to over 25% in 2020.

Needless to say, the undeniable presence of cyber attacks is not optional and leaves no room for debates and calculations.

Why is IoT cybersecurity so important in healthcare institutions?

The introduction of IoT (Internet of Things) created a web of interconnected devices. This web offered new ways to collect, transfer, and otherwise manipulate data without the need for human intervention.

While this opened many new connection opportunities and other benefits, it also yielded new vulnerabilities and produced more ways for cyber attackers to compromise organizations as more and more IoT devices becoming an intrinsic part of the healthcare industry:

• There are a myriad of poorly protected IoT devices that can easily be compromised within a healthcare organization

• Many healthcare employees use IoT devices in remote locations outside of the healthcare organization’s network

• Employees often use IoT devices that lack proper security features

All of these reasons (and many more) confirm the fact that IoT devices can easily be hijacked, which emphasizes the need for strong IoT security for healthcare organizations.

How to improve healthcare security posture?

Healthcare institutions must place particular focus on improving their internal cybersecurity knowledge in order to avoid becoming vulnerable to hackers and other malicious parties.

The first things to do is to secure your systems and elevate security awareness among your employees:

• Consider if the level of security applied to your current IoT solutions is efficient enough

• Position the right security measures across all points of connection

• Incorporate authentication protocols that include vital components regarding data encryption

• Apply encryption in all sensitive data

• Run a full risk assessment analysis

• Use IoT Security Analytics

• Develop secured IoT apps

• Keep up with the latest IoT threats and trends

These are some of the most effective steps healthcare institutions must take in order to improve their IoT cybersecurity. But apart from that, healthcare institutions also need to invest in the right technologies.

How does Cloud SOAR elevate your healthcare protection?

We’ve talked about the level of danger security breaches can pose to healthcare organizations. We also mentioned some of the most logical steps to take in order to ensure the perimeters of your healthcare organization are secured. Now let’s move to the part that is actually the heart of this article - Cloud SOAR.

When we talk about the vulnerabilities posed by IoT solutions, we should also mention the means hackers use to exploit those vulnerabilities, which leads us to the fact that in recent years, hackers are targeting highly sophisticated cyber attacks and are using advanced technology to penetrate even the most secure healthcare organizations.

In other words, cyber attacks are becoming more complex, sophisticated, and unpredictable.

This underlines the necessity of implementing an equally sophisticated solution that will take traditional cyber security operations to the next level. The SOAR technology, which stands for Security Operation, Automation and Response, is known to be a force multiplier and a connective tissue in the cyber world, and its job is to improve the productivity and effectiveness of every tool, process, and security professional it interacts with.

Our Cloud SOAR, in particular, has yielded some extraordinary results over the years:

• 10x SOC team productivity

• 80% improved threat response time

• 300% more incidents resolved

Cloud SOAR is the only SOAR solution with OT and IoT use cases. Cloud SOAR incorporates specific IoT capabilities that improve the functionality of SOPs in healthcare organizations, allowing teams to easily escalate incidents to different teams. And via its “Instant Alarm Enrichment,” it provides essential information that allows security professionals to make well-informed decisions in order to successfully remediate potential incidents.

Additionally, Cloud SOAR allows you to create multiple playbooks that deal with a wide range of known threats, and thanks to its progressive machine learning engine, Cloud SOAR improves your threat hunting abilities and allows you to prevent any potential data breaches.

Cloud SOAR catches false positives in the act, thus allowing your SOC team to have more time to focus on the real threats.

All in all, Cloud SOAR will allow you to make the most out of your current SOC team, deals with the ongoing skill shortage problem, and allows your SOC to competently respond to the rise of complex threats. And in the specific case of the healthcare industry, Cloud SOAR will allow you to overcome the current vulnerabilities and better protect your medical data.

That’s because Cloud SOAR improves your visibility, improves your incident response time, enhances your threat hunting capabilities, and enriches the collaboration within the SOC team of the healthcare institution.

Learn more about why Cloud SOAR is the missing piece of your cybersecurity puzzle by learning about its unique capabilities.