Mitigating risk as healthcare supply chain attacks prevail

Healthcare supply chain attacks have the potential to disrupt care and operations across the healthcare system through just one successful infiltration. The single points of failure that exist across the sector make the risk of supply chain attacks even greater.

“The bad guys have figured out that if they can hit this small supplier who’s a single-source supplier in a particular region, they could cause a lot of impact to the healthcare sector more broadly and maximize their payoffs downstream,” said Errol Weiss, chief security officer of the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC).”It’s definitely different from what we were seeing before.”

Mitigating supply chain attacks requires healthcare organizations to maintain strong, security-minded relationships with their critical suppliers, beginning at the contract stage. Tabletop exercises, response and recovery plans, and a focus on cyber resilience can help health IT security leaders mitigate the risks of this pervasive threat.