Healthcare organizations have struggled since the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, not only due to an increase in demand and staffing shortages, but they have also seen a massive spike in the number of cyberattacks. According to Check Point research, cyberattacks in the healthcare industry have grown by 45% since November 2020. The researchers also stated that botnets, DDoS attacks, ransomware, and remote code execution were the most common cybersecurity incidents faced by the healthcare industry.
The healthcare industry has adapted its methods of delivering care by engaging patients in more ways than just the traditional in-person consultations. In the US, over half of the patients surveyed have electronic health records (EHR), with 44% of patients having accessed them. With virtual care becoming more prevalent, health data management or any form of collecting and sharing of data is now more critical than ever.
Source- Statista.com
Why Back up to the Cloud?
With health data constantly growing, backing up data is crucial. Organizations spend a lot of time and money building their proprietary data and customer information. Data loss resulting from threats or disasters can lead to upset customers, loss of revenue, and potentially bankruptcy.
If the data is not properly maintained, cybercriminals could gain access to patients' private medical information through these healthcare organizations. More and more businesses are utilizing cloud solutions for storing and backing up their data instead of solely relying on traditional physical servers. Cloud services often provide various encryption methods that even the service provider would not be able to access without a decryption key. Cloud backups provide an additional layer of security by storing data in data centers where the access and hardware are maintained by the cloud solutions provider.
Advantages of Backing up Data
Ease of Management- This is crucial in the event of restoring lost data, which can be extremely time-consuming and stressful. Having backups is vital to organizations in times of crisis. Data recovery without any type of backup is near impossible, and rarely successful.
Ease of management creates a consistent process for backing up information and data, it also can define the process for recovery. This would result in users not having to back up their own devices and makes retrieving misplaced or lost data easier.
Security- Data protection and security have been a growing concern for the healthcare industry, especially in the past few years. Healthcare organizations have been encouraged to adopt efficient data privacy and security practices. Integrating reliable data backup services can help organizations and businesses protect data from malicious activities and cyberattacks. Most solutions offer data protection with the help of encryption to secure backed-up data from breaches. Healthcare organizations must ensure that their patients’ stored data is safe, as identity theft cases from stolen data are continuing to increase.
Zero impact on performance- Users should not realize that backups are running in the background. Fewer interruptions to users’ day-to-day activities can result in more productivity.
Quick Recovery- Quick and robust access to the data is one of the key advantages of backup and recovery solutions. An effective backup and recovery plan will allow users to resume activity after an unforeseen incident quicker than some of the traditional recovery methods. Every minute of downtime has a financial impact on an organization, a quicker recovery could be the difference between surviving or declaring bankruptcy.
Although healthcare organizations have become one of the key targets for hackers, there are different methods of addressing these concerns effectively. IT teams and cybersecurity teams should expand their threat profiles, increase edge-network awareness, and impose a higher level of restrictions on installed software applications.
To protect against cyberattacks, organizations should use a combination of user training, risk assessment, protection of critical systems, and focus on isolating systems that cannot be easily protected or updated.
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