Cybercriminals have reached a new low. They are targeting medical devices and challenging the device risk management strategies designed to protect them. While integration of technology and medical devices has revolutionized patient care, this digital transformation comes with its own set of challenges, making it imperative to have robust medical device risk management platforms in place and posing a remarkably interesting opportunity for strengthening healthcare organizations’ cyber defenses. Ensure your device risk management approach stands a chance by incorporating the following.
Essential Elements of Medical Device Risk Management Strategy
- Automated Asset Discovery and Inventory
Your risk management platform should use AI and machine learning (AI/ML) to discover and classify every connected asset, including IT, IoT, OT, and IoMT devices. This eliminates blind spots and provides high-fidelity asset context, ensuring that all devices are accounted for and monitored. Experience tells us as many as 49% of a healthcare organization’s connected devices are not monitored because they are not included in an organization’s automated inventory. This points to opportunities with the device detection tools themselves and with policies and procedures related to adding new devices and incorporating them into the inventory and monitoring capabilities.
- Comprehensive Visibility into Vulnerabilities
Your platform should identify vulnerabilities in both managed and unmanaged devices, prioritize remediation based on risk scores, and assign tasks to the appropriate device owners. This proactive approach helps mitigate potential threats before they can cause harm.
- Accelerated Incident Response
Integrated intrusion detection engines and AI/ML-based anomaly detection, should identify both known and unknown threats to your organization. Automated incident response policies should quarantine devices, block ports, or terminate sessions to significantly reduce the response time to cyber threats.
- Zero Trust Segmentation
Implementing Zero Trust segmentation policies prevent lateral movement within the network and isolates vulnerable devices based on baseline communications. This containment strategy is crucial in limiting the spread of any potential breaches.
- Utilization Insights
Risk management platforms should provide insights into device utilization in your organization, aiding in operational and budgeting decisions. This insight can help you optimize maintenance schedules and capital spend, ensuring efficient use of resources.
- Compliance and Security
Compliance frameworks such as NIST-CSF and CIS Controls should identify non-compliant devices and generate reports for auditors. This ensures that healthcare providers meet regulatory requirements and maintain high security standards.
- Regulatory Concerns and Other Risks of Medical Device Risk Management Platform
A robust device risk management program can demonstrate holistic understanding of your organization's threat landscape and can instill confidence in your team, your leadership, and your cybersecurity strategy. Without a robust risk management platform, healthcare IT organizations face can include:
- Increased Vulnerability to Cyber Attacks
Without comprehensive visibility and automated detection, healthcare providers are more susceptible to cyber-attacks, which can compromise patient data and disrupt critical medical services.
- Regulatory Non-Compliance
Failure to meet regulatory standards can result in hefty fines and legal repercussions, damaging the organization's reputation and financial standing.
- Operational Inefficiencies
Lack of insights into device utilization can lead to poor resource allocation, increased downtime, and higher operational costs.
- Delayed Incident Response
Without automated incident response capabilities, the time taken to detect and respond to threats increases, potentially leading to more severe breaches and greater damage.
A Trusted Partner Can Share the Burden and Help Mitigate the Risks
Implementing and managing a medical device risk management platform requires expertise and resources. A set it and forget it approach cannot be trusted and neither can program that periodically assess vulnerabilities and device inventory comprehensiveness. The power, the protection, the risk mitigation is ongoing, always on, monitoring of all the devices – not just a percentage of them. Involving a partner that specializes in healthcare IT brings new dimensions and comprehensiveness to your device risk management strategy and to the capacity of your team.
Consider partners who can offer:
Expertise and Support
With a dedicated managed services team, a trusted partner brings the necessary expertise to handle complex cybersecurity challenges.
Scalability
As healthcare organizations grow, their cybersecurity needs evolve. A trusted partner ensures that the risk management platform scales, accordingly, providing continuous protection without compromising quality.
Regular Health Checks and Performance Reviews
Continuous improvement and client satisfaction are prioritized through regular assessments and tailored reports, ensuring that the platform remains effective and up to date.
Vendor Consolidation
The cybersecurity-related risks in healthcare are inspiring organizations to scrutinize partners and consolidate relationships when possible. Select partners for cybersecurity partners who can support your information protection programs with advisory services, interim leadership, virtual, and fractional leadership, and product and program specific reports. Also consider the additional offerings of your health IT firm so you can employ their managed services, support desk, staffing, revenue cycle, and EHR advisory services based on established awareness of your cybersecurity programs, goals, and environment.
Trusted Toolset
Integrating a medical device risk management platform is a critical necessity for modern healthcare providers. Numerous tools are available in a crowded market of providers with varying degrees of healthcare IT knowledge and success rates that are difficult to differentiate as you make tech stack and partner selections. CereCore selects tools based on the growing need for services from our client base, which includes the healthcare organizations with fewer than 25 beds and well over 250. Partnering with us ensures an enhanced level of expertise as healthcare organizations navigate the complexities of cybersecurity with confidence, support, and defensibility for their approach.
Resources:
Services that can disrupt the hackers
Cybersecurity Risk Mitigation Suggestion: Share the Burden
