Beyond the Golden Hour: Why healthcare is uniquely vulnerable to attack
Ransomware and other system interference attacks are dangerous because they risk patients’ lives, and attackers capitalize on this risk.
In Part 2 of this three-part series, LogicGate’s Nick Kathmann outlines the specific cybersecurity vulnerabilities and challenges faced by healthcare facilities amid today’s evolving threat landscape.
In my previous piece, I outlined the idea of the “Golden Hour” and the ways in which the need to prioritize patient care makes healthcare companies a prime target for attackers looking to make a quick score.
Healthcare is unique in that downtime doesn’t just cost organizations money — it risks lives. Imagine an anesthesiologist losing access to medication dosage records mid-surgery because of a ransomware attack, putting the patient at grave risk. Attackers know this, and they are more than willing to exploit it for their own gain.
But the Golden Hour isn’t the only thing that makes healthcare unique. The industry faces a wide range of challenges that make securing systems and data difficult. What’s more, healthcare faces regulatory scrutiny that outpaces most other industries, with HIPAA penalties hanging like the sword of Damocles over any organization at risk of a breach.
Building a digital architecture that is both secure enough to withstand attacks and usable enough to avoid disrupting patient care is no small task, and the safest path forward isn’t always clear. To effectively defend against today’s threats, it’s important for healthcare organizations to understand how modern attackers operate and why the industry is particularly vulnerable.
