Digitalization in the healthcare industry is changing lives across the globe as we see it today. It has reshaped patient-doctor interactions for better. AI-powered medical devices, blockchain, telemedicine, electronic health records, and remote-patient monitoring are few examples that have transformed the healthcare sector.

Today, healthcare professionals use various endpoint devices such as mobiles, laptops, tablets, etc. to share medical data with patients and vice versa. These endpoints serve as an entry point for threat actors to gain illicit access and orchestrate a cyberattack on a healthcare organization. Adding to this, the COVID-19 trend of remote working coupled with bring-your-own-device (BYOD) has increased the number of connected devices across healthcare networks. All these serve as perfect gateways cyber attackers to sneak in and steal sensitive patient data. This is the reason the need for endpoint security in healthcare hospital is witnessing a steep rise.

A report by the Wall Street Journal states that healthcare cyberattacks have been extremely brutal in the last couple of years. Adding to it, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that throughout the pandemic, more than 1 million people were affected by data breaches at healthcare organizations. Another report by Businesswire suggests that data breaches have affected more than 26.4 million records in the U.S. in 2020-21. Further, it is estimated that stolen or lost protected health information (PHI) will cost the U.S. healthcare industry up to USD 7 Billion annually.

All these unsettling numbers suggest the increasing need for endpoint security in healthcare industry. Healthcare providers and hospitals are on the lookout for powerful endpoint security solutions for hospitals and IBM MaaS360 is one such robust endpoint security solution.

This post throws light on some of the serious threats in healthcare sector and how IBM MaaS360 can help hospitals win at endpoint security.

Endpoint Security Threats in the Healthcare Industry:

1. Ransomware

The CyberPeace Institute has released a report that 295 cyberattacks were conducted in the healthcare sector between June 2, 2020 and December 3, 2021. The attacks happened at the rate of 3.8% per week. Most of these attacks were focused on patient care services (179), pharma (35), medical manufacturing and development (26), as well as other medical organizations (23). Ransomware targets endpoints through malvertising, i.e. a user clicking on a malicious link, and phishing mails containing malicious content.

2. Data Breaches

According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report and Ponemon Institute, data breach is more rampant in the healthcare industry than any other industry. These breaches take place due to various reasons ranging from credential stealing malware program, lost laptops and smart devices, or an employee who may disclose the data accidentally or purposefully (insider threat). Cyber criminals perceive personal health information (PHI) as more valuable piece of information these days.

3. DDoS

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) is a common tactic, technique, and procedure (TTP) adopted by cyber criminals to jeopardize endpoint security in healthcare organizations. DDoS attacks deny healthcare providers access to patient portals. In simple words, DDoS will jeopardize the operations of a healthcare facility, thereby denying them the right to send or receive patient emails, information, prescriptions, records, and so on.

Endpoint security in healthcare sector may have consequences that go beyond financial loss. To mitigate these threats, hospitals ought to embrace advanced endpoint security solutions like IBM MaaS360.

Why IBM MaaS360 is the perfect Unified EndPoint Management Solution for Healthcare Providers?

IBM MaaS360 has been a market leader when it comes to endpoint security for hospitals. Here’s why:

• IBM Maas360 helps healthcare providers to secure their endpoints including connected medical equipment and devices, tablets, phones, watches, and so on.
• IBM Maas360 for healthcare helps to automate encryption and password enforcement, which helps protect all the communication between patient and caregivers/hospitals.
• Mobile security index offers a mobile security score, thereby alerting a user on impending threat.
• Helps to set detailed security settings on all their business owned devices.
• Location tracking in case of mobile or device theft.
• On-demand remote access that allows caregivers and healthcare professionals to track their teammates or employees across the organization and minimize instances of human errors.
• Unified endpoint threat management platform for centralized threat and data loss protection (DLP) management.
• Real-time reporting and analytics to offer in-depth insights on threats, thereby helping to mitigate them before the threat escalates.

Combined with IBM IBM Watson AI, IBM Maas360 integrates right layers of data protection to safeguard all critical endpoints for a hospital.

Being a trusted IBM Global Security Solutions Partner, we can help you get the most out of IBM MaaS360 for your healthcare organization. Futurism EndPoint Secure powered by IBM Maas360 is a fully managed and Unified Endpoint Managed Security service designed to help hospitals and healthcare providers reduce the risk of endpoint breaches and attacks.

Futurism has been helping its clients in the healthcare industry to leverage IBM Maas360 in a cost-iterative and seamless manner.

Reach out to us at +1 (732) 790-2593 or book a FREE consultation here.