Healthcare organisations must recognise cybersecurity as risk management and act accordingly

The threat environment that the healthcare sector is operating in is changing rapidly. There is no doubt that with the expansion of digital systems in both hospitals and clinics the risk that used to be a mere IT matter has now become a risk directly related to patient safety, privacy and the uninterrupted provision of care. Recent articles suggest that leaders should abandon the view of the problem as a purely technical one and, instead, treat it as a core element of risk management.

Why should cybersecurity in healthcare be a concern beyond the aspect of data?

The medical institutions keep a lot of very sensitive data about their patients, that includes basic personal details as well as complete medical histories and records. This fact makes them highly attractive for hackers. In the event of a breach protected health information (PHI) may be revealed, response times can be significantly lengthened, or it could happen that hospitals will have to operate manually, thus putting patients’ lives at risk.

Besides this, regulatory obligations add to the stakes. A lot of countries have strict requirements for compliance with privacy laws. What is more, if patient security is compromised, trust will be undermined and lives may be put at risk. Patients’ security is not a matter of choice, it should be an integral part of the governance, compliance and continuity framework of every health organisation.

Healthcare industry is increasingly targeted by hackers

Approximately nine out of ten US healthcare organisations faced a cyber, attack in the last 12 months, according to a recent survey conducted by Proofpoint and Ponemon Institute. Nearly three, quarters of those reported negative impacts on patient care due to these incidents. In the time of two years, 96% of them have had at least two different incidents of data theft involving sensitive health data.

It is quite shocking that a significant proportion of data loss is due to internal issues, in 35% of cases breaches were caused by staff who didn’t adhere to security policies. While many organisations are taking steps to address this issue: 76 per cent of them have started security, awareness training compared to 71 per cent in 2024, and an increasing number are opting for AI-based Data Loss Prevention to mitigate risks.

The importance of cybersecurity in healthcare should be understood from a risk management and patient safety perspective

For healthcare executives, the issue of cybersecurity should not only be under the umbrella of the IT department, but it has to go a step further and be part of enterprise risk management, compliance planning and patient safety protocols. Coordination between CISOs, CIOs, clinical leadership and executive teams is therefore a must.

On top of that, digital transformation, for instance, cloud migration, AI usage, or networked medical devices, is just making things more complicated. That automatically calls for more training, better cross, department coordination, and more numerous and thorough security checks of not only the in, house systems but also the solutions of third-party vendors and medical devices.

Linking security and care delivery

Among other hospitals, St. Luke’s University Health Network is an example of a healthcare organisation that successfully integrates security into its operations. They lessened operational complexity and boosted their defensive ability against threats as they made a shift from the disjointed and hard-to-manage security tools (e.g. various cloud-based monitoring, endpoint defense, and unified security solutions) to one consolidated security platform and gained visibility across systems.

It would be a mistake to consider security as an obstacle to innovation. On the contrary, if implemented properly, it can serve as the force behind the safe and trustful adoption of new technology such as AI-powered diagnostics, cloud, based record management, remote monitoring, which also complies with regulation.

The urgency exists

With the increasing level of automation and sophistication of cyber threats, the healthcare industry cannot take the risk of postponing the issue of cybersecurity as risk management. If they do so, the organisations will be continuously vulnerable to data breaches, service disruption, regulatory penalties, and, what is worse, harm to patients.

Immediate action is a must for the leaders. What they require are comprehensive risk frameworks, collaboration between different teams, continuous monitoring, and staff trainings. Cybersecurity will only then become the basis of safe, resilient, patient-centered care, as opposed to being an IT afterthought.