As healthcare continues to remain under the risk of cyber attacks, modern day hospitals are increasing their IT spending towards cyber security. The healthcare cyber security market across the globe is expected to cross USD 27 billion mark by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of 19.1 percent till 2025, says a report by Global Market Insights. "Every sector of business has attacks, but healthcare is experiencing the largest growth of cyber attacks because of the nature of its information. There is no perfect cyber security solution. And it is not perfection but reasonable efforts that help to address security issues. That's going to require an investment up-front to see where data is located, and educating the workforce on phishing incidents,” says Lisa Rivera, a partner at Bass, Berry and Sims who focuses on healthcare security.                                                

Rising Need for Dedicated Cyber Security Teams

Taking into account the sensitive nature of patient data and value of the knowledge in the form of Electronic Health Records, let us examine the importance of cyber security in healthcare industry which is increasingly becoming data-driven.  As a storehouse of personal information of the patient and financial data such as debit and credit card numbers, healthcare is becoming a prime target for hackers who try to steal the data and use it for medical or financial fraud. Particularly in the hospital where there exist many endpoints systems and IoT connected devices that intake data into the hospital network from various data sources, the risk of cyber attacks is even more. Also, the part of the problem is that most of the hospitals today are focusing solely on upgrading their medical technology to complement doctors and other staff in order to provide faster and better healthcare, completely forgetting the security aspects of technology deployments. As today’s hospitals are not in the dearth of financial resources or operating space, it would be very helpful for them to hire a cyber security team to protect their data. At worst, they should at least consider outsourcing security to an expert cyber security company to survive in this attack-prone digital world.