Hospital Cybersecurity and Compliance Strategy | Blog

The healthcare and public health (HPH) sector has continuously embraced the advance of technology in their pursuit of digital transformation. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals and medical institutions needed digital solutions and collaboration tools to keep in touch with both their patients and their staff.

However, these new tools have only expanded their attack surface – and bad actors are exploiting this. Healthcare cybersecurity risks are all too real – from data breaches to ransomware, and even insider threats.

Moreover, managing legal compliance in the healthcare industry is extremely challenging. The amount and velocity of data collected by hospitals and medical institutions worldwide means they sit on lakes of data. An unprotected hospital server is a malpractice suit waiting to happen. Regulation is strict and complex.

This is why healthcare providers must adopt a hospital cybersecurity and compliance solution to protect the sensitive information they hold.

Hospital Cybersecurity and Compliance Challenges

Patients are now more concerned with the value of care they receive. The consumerization of healthcare means that patients are demanding improved access to billing, network information, and a clearer statement of benefits.

Because of this, the HPH sector has adopted more convenient care delivery methods, such as telehealth, virtual wait rooms, pre-registration and co-pay portals, and other remote healthcare systems.

These cutting-edge technologies bring new dangers around data security, legal, and regulatory compliance in healthcare:

• The Open Source Cybersecurity Intelligence Network and Resource (OSCINR) reports that 60% of all current medical devices are unpatchable.
• According to the February 2021 Healthcare Data Breach Report from the HIPAA Journal, there was a 40.63% increase in reported data breaches that month. The majority of these were hacking incidents.
• To make matters worse, IBM reports that the healthcare industry is the most expensive sector in terms of data breach costs, amounting to $7.13M per month in 2020.

To protect patients (customers), governments have passed laws like the US Privacy Act of 1974, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA). Hospitals and medical institutions need to adhere to these new regulations, or else face serious compliance issues.

How can providers then protect themselves and their consumers from these threats?

Solutions: Learn more about SafeGuard Cyber's
advanced governance for the healthcare industry

Cybersecurity and NextGen Compliance for Hospitals

To maintain hospital cybersecurity, as well as legal and regulatory compliance in healthcare, providers must find a way to enable their patients to communicate with them anyway they want, without putting their data and information at risk.

At the same time, they must also enable their healthcare teams to communicate with patients and each other through secure channels, lest they risk vulnerability to social engineering and malware attacks. Improving cybersecurity in healthcare, therefore, is paramount to a successful practice.

The answer: deploying a NextGen Compliance and Cybersecurity solution that has the following features:

1. Automated security and compliance policy supervision for all digital communications
2. Full archiving of all communication contents -- from videos, to chat, shared files, and even audio transcripts.
3. Enhanced Security including DLP and advanced malware analysis through automation and machine learning capabilities
4. Auto-rollback account security violations and deactivate suspicious logins or any hospital cybersecurity threat.
5. Rapid time-to-value, easy deployment and setup with administrator authorization.

With NextGen Compliance, providers can:

• Drastically enhance overall risk mitigation - No more random sampling; everything is subjected to real-time policy supervision.
• Enjoy a newfound agility - Providers can reach patients through any point(s) of communication, without fear of data loss and cyberattacks. Providers won’t have to force patients into communication apps that they dislike or aren’t used to.
• Generate all-new and unified analytics for business insights - Access millions of conversations and easily and quickly adapt to patient responses and insights. From a burdensome cost of doing business, turn compliance into a source of insightful data that opens up opportunities for cost-savings and better risk mitigation.
• Turn compliance teams into enablers - Compliance teams no longer pump the brakes within an organization; now, they’re backing bold new changes and initiatives. This makes managing legal compliance in the healthcare industry easier and less challenging.

Protecting Providers and Patients from Digital Threats

The HPH industry continues to embrace change, but with it comes underlying digital threats that cause healthcare cybersecurity risks and compliance challenges.

The only way to protect hospitals and medical institutions is to adopt hospital cybersecurity and NextGen Compliance solutions that drastically enhance risk mitigation and provide a newfound agility that other healthcare organizations have never enjoyed before.

Guide: To learn more about how NextGen compliance works,
check out our guide here.