By Gina Gallucci-White
When it comes to patient health records, employee information and data from medical technology devices, hospitals have a treasure trove of sensitive, private information to keep confidential.
“The whole idea of having electronic records positions hospitals to provide better care and services to the patients they are working with, but at the same time, obviously, (there is a) risk associated with this information being shared in electronic format,” said Harry Holt, vice president of operations of Baltimore-based BITHGROUP Technologies.
Hospitals continue to be heavily targeted by very sophisticated adversaries, including internationally-based criminal organizations and nation states such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Sometimes nation states work in collusion with criminal organizations to target health care entities and hospitals.
John Riggi, senior adviser for cybersecurity and risk for the American Hospital Association, notes cyber adversaries will seek to exploit personal and confidential medical information for criminal purposes such as fraudulent billing and general monetization of the information gathered.
“Nation states…
