Cybersecurity is a critical concern across all sectors, so cybersecurity in healthcare is no exception. Protecting your systems is essential for maintaining the smooth functioning of your healthcare operations.
Here are some key strategies to boost your security and reduce your cyber risks.
Education, education, education
Despite all the focus on high-tech solutions to security, which certainly have their place, an alarming number of breaches are due to human error. Training your staff to recognise and respond to cyber threats will significantly reduce the risk to your organisation. Your staff should all understand the basics of good security practices, such as recognising phishing emails, using strong passwords, and not clicking suspicious links or browsing dodgy websites.
Training should be updated regularly too. Traditional annual refresher courses may not be as effective in an evolving threat landscape and the information is often quickly forgotten. Bite-sized training provided regularly is a much more effective strategy when it comes to preventing cyber-attacks in healthcare.
Regular software updates and patching
Details on new vulnerabilities in outdated software can be spread across the internet in minutes. Usually these will include details of how to search for vulnerable systems and how to exploit them.
It is crucial that you have a robust software update and patching policy. This includes end-user devices, such as laptops and mobile devices, as well as servers and applications.
Achieving compliance with this policy for end-user devices can be challenging, as individuals often resist lengthy operating system updates during work hours. This is where communication of your update policy is key. It’s crucial for users to understand that these updates and reboots are necessary for security, and not just measures imposed by a cautious IT department.
In all cases, this may mean ensuring that the software you’re using is still receiving security updates. If it isn’t, you should seriously consider upgrading to a version that is.
Use strong access controls
This includes using concepts such as least privilege to ensure that users only have access to the functions they require for their day-to-day role, as well as setting strong passwords and using multi-factor authentication.
Implementing a least privilege access control can be challenging initially. If your users are used to being able to access everything everywhere then they’ll likely complain about the restrictions. A strong education programme can help with this, ensuring that users understand the need for such controls.
Have a well-understood incident reporting plan
It’s very likely that at some point there will be a breach in your security. How you respond to this hugely affects the outcome. A strong, swift response can mitigate a potentially major breach, while a slow, ineffective response can escalate a minor issue into a significant problem.
All your teams need to understand what to do if they suspect an incident is occurring, and they need to feel able to freely report it. This second part is important; having a culture where people are trusted and feel empowered to raise issues means you’re much more likely to get people to own up to mistakes and bring issues to light quickly.
Your incident response plan should be available to, and effectively communicated to, everyone and it should be clear on who will do what and when.
Regular backups and recovery plan
Following on from the last point, if something does go wrong, then you want to be able to recover as fully and quickly as possible; this is where backup and recovery are important.
In our modern cloud-based environments, the importance of backup is often misunderstood and overlooked. Many cloud-based services are incredibly resilient and durable, with many cloud storage services delivering what is termed “11 9s of durability”. This means that if you were to store 10,000,000 (ten million) files, on average you could expect to lose one file every 10,000 years. That is mind-blowing! But having your files stored in such places does not remove the need for backup.
While the storage provider won’t lose or corrupt your data by mistake, all that durability is useless if someone deliberately deletes or encrypts your files. Or if your provider ceases to trade, has a prolonged outage, or you lose access to your account. You get the picture!
As well as ensuring your data uses robust storage providers, you should also ensure it’s backed up and stored away from the primary storage.
And of course, your backups should be tested regularly to ensure that they work and provide the level of coverage you think they do.
Summary
Preventing cyber-attacks on your healthcare organisation does require a proactive and multifaceted approach, but none of the steps discussed need to be complex or difficult. While the specific measures needed will depend on the size and nature of your organisation, the strategies outlined here provide a robust starting point.
Cyber security is not a one-time effort but requires an ongoing process that improves and responds to evolving threats. Putting education of your team at the heart of this process will give you the best chance of protecting your information assets from attackers.