Medicine has always been a field where innovations play a crucial and truly life-saving role. However, during the pandemic, the healthcare industry was forced to significantly speed up the implementation of new developments. Indeed, this pace of change and urgent digitalization within medical organizations was noted by 81% of executives in a recent Accenture report. To determine whether this mass transition to telehealth is keeping pace with security measures, Kaspersky conducted a global survey of healthcare providers.
The research found that organizations widely use medical equipment with a legacy OS, mainly because of high upgrade costs, compatibility issues, or a lack of internal knowledge on how to upgrade, among other reasons.
Does
your organization currently use medical equipment with a legacy operating
system (OS) and if so, what are the main reasons for this?
The usage of outdated equipment may lead to cyber-incidents. When software developers stop supporting a system, they also halt the release of any updates, which among other improvements, often contain security patches for discovered vulnerabilities. If left unpatched, these can become an easy and accessible initial attack vector to penetrate the company’s infrastructure, even for unskilled attackers. Healthcare organizations collect a wealth of sensitive and valuable data, making them one of the most lucrative targets, and unpatched devices can facilitate a successful attack for adversaries.
When it comes to cybersecurity readiness, only 30% of healthcare workers are very confident that their organization can effectively stop all security attacks or breaches at the perimeter. Just 34% expressed conviction that their organization has up to date, adequate hardware and software IT security protection.
At the same time, half (50%) of global respondents agreed that their organization had already experienced data leaks, DDoS or ransomware attacks.
“The healthcare sector is evolving to meet the demand for accessible help by actively adopting connected devices. But this also adds unique cybersecurity challenges typical to the embedded systems. Our report confirms that many organizations still use medical devices that run on old OS and face obstacles that hamper upgrades. While there is a need for developing a strategy of modernization, there are also solutions and measures available which can help to minimize the risks in the meantime. Those combined with medical staff awareness can significantly raise the security level and pave the way for the future development of the healthcare industry,” comments Sergey Martsynkyan, VP, Corporate Product Marketing at Kaspersky.
To help the healthcare sector minimize the likelihood of cyber-incidents caused by obsolete and unpatched systems, Kaspersky recommends taking the following steps:
More insights on the current state of the healthcare industry are available via this link.
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