Cyber Threat Intelligence in Healthcare
Advancements in technology, the internet, distributed computing and cloud computing have greatly shifted the way businesses operate. Healthcare establishments are in sync with the current trends of information storage and information technologies. This often means the healthcare sector has already experienced the same threats affecting other industries. Human and capital investment in the arena of cybersecurity threat intelligence are, therefore, paramount. Healthcare organizations of all kinds are prone to receiving targeted attacks from hackers. Furthermore, the healthcare sector is a sensitive industry and has attracted strict government regulations regarding the way electronic protected health information is handled and stored.
Healthcare
The United States enacted the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in 1996 to ensure that collection, centralization, storage, search and analysis of data are all in accordance with best practices for consumer protection. Cyber threat intelligence and HIPAA regulations are therefore instrumental to the protection of electronic health information, and cybersecurity should be considered as a reinforcement to stay compliant with existing HIPAA regulations. HIPAA also requires organizations to implement specific standards of cybersecurity. If organizations operate under HIPAA, they can leverage Nucleon’s threat intelligence as part of their Security Management Process 1 under HIPAA (see 45 CFR § 164.308(a)(1)) to help ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of electronic protected health information.
The knowledge of cybersecurity threats and intelligence is crucial to the protection of healthcare and hospital information. This knowledge includes understanding indicators of compromise as well as historical, current and future trends in cybersecurity. The network managers in health settings are expected to be up to date and skilled on the current and emerging trends and take a proactive approach to cybersecurity. They should constantly be on the lookout for new cybersecurity tools, breaches occurring elsewhere in the world, intrusion detection systems, malware protection tools and other incidents. Usually with a tight budget and limited staff, they have to face all these challenges at once.
With Nucleon, healthcare organizations can enjoy the benefits of cybersecurity as if they had their own dedicated intelligence team working for them. The privacy of health information is paramount. HIPAA regulations and related legislation are designed to ensure that healthcare-related organizations are investing the needed resources into protecting the data. With expert cyber criminals out to steal information or encrypt it for ransom, personal healthcare information is of very high value on the black market. The price tag for personal health information is lucrative for hackers, and countries and other entities are constantly developing offensive capabilities that might affect civilian healthcare networks as well.
All this threats making it necessary for health organizations to invest in security infrastructure and human capital. The field of cybersecurity is continuously evolving. To remain in control, organizations should invest in proactive measures to plan and mitigate against cybersecurity breaches. Proactive measures are considered to be the most robust mitigation against emerging threats. These measures include penetration testing, bounties, predictive analytics and cyber intelligence. Big companies are already continuously investing in cyber threat intelligence and machine learning for their frontline mitigation against cybersecurity breaches. Nucleon enables organizations to complement their cybersecurity tools and have better compliance with HIPAA by utilizing automatic reliable actionable threat intelligence that ensures organizations are protected.