Healthcare Asset Management: Addressing Emerging Cyber Threats

Considering the recent pandemic, many people have realized how dependent we all are on medical professionals and their skills. Medical facilities across the world rely on sensitive equipment to perform accurate diagnostics and treatments.

The adaptation of IoT by the medical industry has also sparked some serious interest from nefarious members of our communities. Medical institutions have had to take a serious look at their healthcare asset risk management approach and the security thereof, forcing the Healthcare Industry to make healthcare IoT device security a priority.

What are IoMT devices and their benefits?

IoMT devices are essentially IoT devices that are utilized by the healthcare industry. In a general sense, IoT devices are devices that are connected to a network and can communicate and share information and services across those networks. This includes communication over public networks such as the internet.

As globally available technology evolved over the last two decades, many applications for IoT devices in the medical industry have been devised and produced with great success.

IoMT devices can be grouped into four main categories. Firstly, the devices that are utilized by professionals in hospitals.

These devices typically include sensor-based applications of IoT where patients are monitored in a hospital setting. Other applications of IoT in this category can include devices utilized by professionals themselves to access information about patients and update the medical histories of patients while in their care. Hospital administrators would also have the ability to actively track dispensaries and team effectiveness among other metrics.

Other applications include patient vital monitoring through wearable IoMT devices. These devices can be utilized on-site, in the hospital, or taken home and worn during home recuperation. These remote devices would need to transverse the public internet to communicate information back to the hospital in real time.

And finally, healthcare institutions can utilize IoMT devices in non-traditional settings such as tracking patient transport or even providing remote clinics with a means to communicate information to HQ.

This portability does, however, present its fair share of unique cyber security concerns.

Why are these assets such lucrative targets?

Threat actors are eager to traffic medical records which typically unlocks access to controlled substances. Medical records are a rich source of valuable data points too. This includes diagnostic and financial information along with the PII of patients and employees. To exacerbate the matter hospitals, tend to pay ransom easier than other industries since patients’ lives might be at stake. Additionally, with the volume of personal information curated, data breaches can have a significant negative impact as far as regulatory compliance is concerned.

The unfortunate truth is that medical IoT devices are notoriously vulnerable to violation by threat actors. If hospitals don’t take an active cyber security stance to protect their attack surface, they are easy targets for threat actors.

Healthcare Asset Management through monitoring tools

As the number of IoMT assets grows in complex healthcare environments, asset visibility and the ability to assess and mitigate cyber vulnerabilities diminish. To meet compliance regulations such as HIPAA and ensure patient safety, healthcare organizations should look to implement asset risk management tools.

These monitoring tools often can scan and secure medical IoT devices on the physical layer of the OSI model. This means that devices are secured at their very basic level, ensuring compatibility between the devices and the monitoring solution.

Real-time monitoring allows security professionals of the medical institution to address any vulnerabilities being introduced into the institution’s network as soon as a device is connected to the secured network.

Adequate and sufficient cybersecurity visibility to know who is accessing what data and how people are applying that data at any given time. Visibility is always preceded by discovery, and if such discovery can be executed perpetually and in real-time, it is an excellent starting point.

In Conclusion

Cybersecurity efforts are never foolproof. Effective cyber security is often a layered implementation of various solutions. Where vulnerabilities are identified as part Healthcare Asset attack surface they need to be actively addressed. Having clear, holistic security visibility of vulnerable devices is critical, especially in the healthcare industry. Healthcare Asset Management is therefore a crucial part of a healthcare institution’s cyber security regime.