Jul 22
2020
Why Is Cybersecurity In Healthcare Still Struggling?
It’s mostly not news to anyone anymore (at least to those within cybersecurity and healthcare circles) that healthcare is heavily vulnerable to cyberattacks. In 2018, the healthcare industry received about twice the number of attacks as other industries.
But what’s worrisome is that this hasn’t really changed. Things don’t look much better in 2020, where cyberattacks and human error have led to millions of exposed records. And that’s only the breaches that have been reported so far.
So why, even with ample proof of the cybersecurity challenges and threats to healthcare,nothing has changed? Why aren’t hospitals, providers, and vendors taking the necessary steps to ensure better security practices and thus better patient confidentiality? Let’s dive into the healthcare industry’s cybersecurity problems and look at some of the solutions to them.
Critical underfunding
Those in healthcare are very familiar with budgetary limitations. Underfunding has long been an issue for hospitals and clinics in general, but even more so when it comes to the IT department. In the past, very little of the budget has gone to cybersecurity efforts in all but the big hospitals in metropolitan areas.
There is a silver lining, however. According to the HIMSS Cybersecurity Survey, change – while slow – is happening. Healthcare organizations are starting to allocate more of their budget to cybersecurity – although there’s no significant data on how much that may be.