The recent cybersecurity breach at US health-tech giant Change Healthcare brings the need for tight cyber controls in healthcare into sharp focus. The US healthcare system is still recovering from the attack on February 21, which caused chaos around medical claims and payments.
With huge amounts of sensitive data and a far-reaching attack surface, the healthcare industry is one of the most targeted sectors for cyber criminals.
Data breaches and patient privacy are a major concern; protecting patient data in healthcare is paramount. Change Healthcare, for example, handles billions of healthcare transactions annually, and questions remain about the security of millions of people’s highly sensitive medical information following the cyberattack.
Ransomware attacks in healthcare are another huge worry in the sector. The hackers behind the Change Healthcare attack – a Russian group known variously as AlphV or BlackCat – are said to have received a $22mn payment in bitcoin.
With patients’ lives at stake, serious disruptions to service levels can be the difference between life and death for many, and this is what makes healthcare organisations so vulnerable to ransomware attacks.
Here, we look at 10 of the leading cybersecurity companies who are helping protect the healthcare industry.
CEO: Fran Rosch
Imprivata is an expert in cybersecurity software, technology and security, whose goal is to “transform the way organisations solve security challenges and protect data”. It provides services around single sign-on, authentication management, clinical workflows, secure text messaging, patient identification, identity management and multi-factor authentication.
Healthcare businesses use its Imprivata FairWarning PPI Platform to protect patient data stored across electronic health records (EHR), cloud, and big data.
CEO: Yaniv Vardi
Claroty helps organisations secure Extended Internet of Things (XIoT) systems across healthcare environments. XIoT is having a significant impact in the healthcare industry, with wearable devices that continuously monitor vital signs becoming more commonplace.
Claroty’s Medigate solution is a modular, SaaS-powered healthcare cybersecurity platform that scales to provide protection as operations evolve. The solution extends cybersecurity across the entire healthcare XIoT, from IV pumps and ultrasounds to smart HVAC and lighting systems.
CEO: Amir Ben-Efraim
Menlo Security was founded in 2013, and specialises in Internet isolation, cybersecurity, network security, remote browser isolation, cloud security and Zero Trust. Its eBook on Healthcare’s essential guide to preventing cybersecurity breaches covers subjects including protecting against email-based threats, reconfiguring online security for federal agencies and preventing malware.
CEO: Matt Cohen
CyberArk is a security partner for around half of all Fortune 500 companies and a third of the Global 2000. It has office worldwide, and supports healthcare providers by building automation capabilities that prevent human error and allow IT operations to focus on the most critical work. The company says it has “a flexible approach which secures privileged access vulnerabilities without disturbing the business”.
CEO: Pam Murphy
Imperva delivers end-to-end protection and compliance for critical healthcare data and applications. Its Data Security Fabric solution secures and monitors data activity on-premises, in the cloud, or across a mix of the two. Its machine learning algorithms cover the data of healthcare organisations, and in real-time can flag threats and anomalous behaviour.
The company says the solution “offers 24/7 proactive monitoring and expertise to maximise the health, security, and insights”.
CEO: Gil Shwed
Check Point offers “the industry’s most comprehensive cybersecurity solution for healthcare IoT”, the company says. Check Point prevents IoT-related attacks by minimising IoT attack surfaces in a way that is scalable and non-disruptive to critical medical processes.
Check Point’s integrated healthcare cyber security solution is also designed to reduce costs by delivering unified threat prevention across networks, cloud, mobile endpoint and IoT, without disrupting critical business and medical processes. Its Check Point CloudGuard suite, meanwhile, provides multi-cloud security and compliance healthcare solutions.
CEO: Eva Chen
Cloud and enterprise cybersecurity specialist Trend Micro helps healthcare organisations improve security before, during, and after an attack. It provides visibility into cybersecurity risks and threats in hospitals across IT, OT and communication technology (CT) environments using legacy and/or modern systems.
Its unified cybersecurity platform protects, detects, and responds to cyber incidents “reducing alert fatigue for security teams and providing minimal total cost of ownership”, the company says.
CEO: Nikesh Arora
Palo Alto Networks is a global cybersecurity leader whose portfolio of solutions enhances the security of existing infrastructure, allowing healthcare providers to focus on innovating, while protecting patient and data security.
Palo Alto Networks’ cloud-delivered security automates threat analysis and update deployments to help ensure consistent patient data protection.
CEO: Peter J Arduini
GE HealthCare “aims to help create a world where healthcare has no limits”, it says. The company helps healthcare organisations safeguard devices, systems, and data, “enabling them to seize every opportunity of connected care”. This is does through the always-on risk management provided by its Skeye cybersecurity solution, which provides active monitoring across networked medical device endpoints and “helps support your organisation’s data safety, profitability, and reputation for delivering care and protection where it matters most: your patients”.