The recent Webinar Wednesday presentation “Bringing BioMed and Security Together to Take Control of Your Medical Devices” was presented by Rich DeFabritus, a senior director of product marketing, and eligible for 1 credit from the ACI. It was sponsored by CyberMDX.
DeFabritus discussed ways HTM professionals can improve device visibility and leverage centralized management to support a hospital’s initiatives and integrate them into the overall cybersecurity strategy. Biomedical engineers responsible for healthcare technology management make significant decisions that affect their hospital’s cybersecurity posture. Whether it is procuring new medical devices, managing device end-of-life, or connecting devices to the network, they make critical decisions regarding device security, data integrity and patient safety. In this webinar, some of the challenges facing biomedical engineers – from procuring devices that have potential vulnerabilities to lack of device visibility and centralized management – and how to support their initiatives and integrate them into an overall cybersecurity strategy were addressed.
The webinar also included a question-and-answer session. One question was, “Do you think cybersecurity teams and biomedical teams are collaborating on life cycle management? And what equipment should they procure or to obtain?”
“So, I kind of talked a little bit about that during the presentation, and what I would say is, I’m encouraged to see that it’s happening more,” DeFabritus said. “I think this is happening, you know, out of necessity. I think if hospitals are dedicated to the security side of things, you will certainly see it now. Now, I’m going to ramble a little bit. And I don’t want to make the answer too long. But, recall that I had mentioned early on that, if you were to look at, you know, there’s 6,200 hospitals in the United States, roughly, you know, maybe 300 have a dedicated security team. The first thing that has to happen is the C-suite or the executives have to take cybersecurity very seriously. They have to invest in it. They have to make sure that there’s backing for those teams. And then, when they do have that, I think the biomedical teams and security teams can collaborate a lot better.”
“What’s more likely, you’ll see, is it’s like an ad hoc security team that doesn’t really have the backing of the management. And things are a little bit loose, he added. “But, I’m encouraged to say that it’s changing, but maybe not fast enough.”
The webinar included 82 attendees for the live presentation. Participants provided feedback via a post-webinar survey that included the question, “What do you like best about the Webinar Wednesday webinar series?”
“Very good insights about security. Grateful for the opportunity” Senior BMET S. Rivera said.
“The webinars are available to watch from any place that has web access and be able to ask questions, make comments, etc. They are convenient, informative and can gather listeners from around the world,” said P. Bozin, BMET II.
“Interesting demonstrations from a variety of product categories,” said C. Baber, BMET.
“Sharing of the speakers’ experiences,” Director G. Perry said.
For more information, visit WebinarWednesday.Live.
