CYBERSECURITY
patient data . That is where we can find a big portion of motivation .
“ The healthcare sector has become a prime target for cybercrime , given the amount of confidential data stored within systems ,” Gregg Hardie , Public Sector Director at SailPoint explains .
Sensitive health data has high value , up to nine times as much as banking information , and risks being held to ransom , released to the dark web , or sold to the highest bidder for whatever nefarious activities .
But it is not just the why which serves as the motivation , the how it can happen makes healthcare equally attractive .
Entry for attacks With the primary focus being on providing healthcare , and with many dealing with budget constraints , it is understandable that investments in new patient care technology may have been prioritised over investments in cyber security or network infrastructure .
“ The scale of NHS operations , legacy issues from the COVID-19 pandemic and the large numbers of people awaiting treatment , exacerbates the sector ’ s vulnerabilities ,” says David Emm , Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky .
Healthcare organisations like the UK ’ s NHS are very large ; it is one of the largest employers in the world with 1.6 million people working for it . Implementing large -scale changes to these systems with either an update or migration to a modern system could prove costly and create too much downtime .
74 October 2024