Sponsored by Medigate
The costs of a successful cyber attack are well documented for the health care industry. What is less understood is what it really takes to mitigate the risks within a connected health system to increase operational resiliency and minimize breach impacts. That’s because there is no simple answer, no single silver bullet.
Each health system requires a unique combination of people, processes and technologies to align governance and risk mitigation efforts with the organization’s desired business outcomes. Everyone and everything need to be working together, considering the risks within the context in which they exist to ensure that any mitigation activities do not impact the organization’s ability to deliver optimal patient care and conduct business.
Unfortunately, a lack of visibility, communication and coordination between the security, biomedical, clinical engineering and business stakeholders within the healthcare delivery organization (HDO) creates gaps that leave health systems vulnerable to exploitation. These gaps must be identified and closed if the health system is to establish a security stance for their clinical settings in line with their tolerance for risk.
Five Capabilities of Successful Risk Management Programs
To minimize the gaps and make sure everyone is on the same page takes a single source of truth that not only documents all assets, but also provides the clinical context required to help everyone understand what’s happening in the environment. To address risks in a meaningful way requires the ability to:
- Accurately Assess Device Risks
It takes combining cybersecurity and clinical expertise to thoroughly identify risks within a connected health system. A healthcare-specific risk framework can detect and score risks, so they can be appropriately prioritized and addressed to keep patients and care safe. - Manage Vulnerabilities
Because devices are often involved in care, risks have to be managed much differently from traditional IT to ensure dependencies are respected and patient protocols are kept intact. Health systems need to apply a clinical lens to their vulnerability management to ensure it is carried out swiftly and safely. - Maintain Good Clinical Cyber Hygiene
To prevent the spread of threats within clinical networks, health systems need to constantly discover, assess and manage the cybersecurity risks that medical, clinical and other unmanaged connected devices introduce to the clinical network. - Consistently Protect from the Core to the Edge – Don’t Forget About Clinics
Health systems need to ensure the same rigor is being applied throughout their distributed facilities and ecosystem to keep their operations and patient care performing as it should. - Operationalize Risk Management Programs
The dynamic nature of healthcare means securing them is never “complete.” There is no set and forget, but there are tools and services that can help automate and operationalize ongoing risk management activities.
To get started, take the Real-Time Healthcare Convergence Assessment from Medigate to identify and address your gaps. Go to: http://bit.ly/medigate-rm