The health care industry is one of the essential industries for a living being. Digital technology has taken over all industries more than how the health care industry left behind. This industry needs special cyber security to store and maintain human personal and confidential data. The health industry must keep the human record from birth to death; therefore, large databases with small or large firms must be maintained.

The healthcare industry uses equipment with new technologies for curing disease, storing, retrieving, sending, and sharing health data. These interconnected devices attract cybercriminals as loopholes are open invitations to data breaches that deeply affect hospital systems and medical databases. Attackers know that systems cannot put human life at risk; therefore, they continuously cause disruption and demand ransom fees from the organization. For all the above healthcare industry must understand how to prevent cyber-attacks and secure all the devices, and safeguard the medical data of healthcare stakeholders such as:-

Patients	Patients must understand the privacy, security policies, and secure communication with their health care providers.
Workforce members	Workforce members must be given the training to understand the privacy and security policies of the health care organization.
C-suite	A chief information security officer (CISO) is present in a health care organization that works on the particular strategy and makes executive decisions about the cyber security program.
Vendors/ Market suppliers	The health care information system deals with vendors/market suppliers who were breached by a cyber-attack on its HVAC (heating, cooling, and air conditioning) vendor system. Cyber attackers compromised HVAC vendor credentials to target the retailer. HVAC vendor credentials were stolen and used to break into the retailer's system.

Need for cyber security for the health care industry

Some of the prominent reasons why the health care industry needs cyber security.

With growing population

The growing population at a fast rate is a challenge to the health care industry. Previously doctors couldn't give patients enough time because they had to do paperwork which was time-consuming and complicated. Still, due to a lot of population, they won't get sufficient time for patient problems and advising them as they have to look out for many patients. Now healthcare institutions use cloud-based backup and database systems for storing health care data. For the efficient working of the healthcare professional, it is necessary to secure databases and networks from cyber-attacks.

Save money

The Health care industry's net worth is millions of dollars that need to be protected by cyber security. Now doctors can deal with more and more patients in 8-hour shift than 12 hours shift with the help of technology, which also reduces the paperwork of doctors and the pain of patients. Securing information/ database prevents cyber attackers, which saves money from losing. Cloud-based and internal database system stores all the doctor and patient data in a secured mode with cyber security, and patients' previous data is easily accessible.

Important to patience

Cyber security is parallel important to patients as it saves all the patient's medical history and protects it from leaking by hackers in the black market. It also helps the patient detect their treatment history for further treatment and get fast treatment with new devices & technology. Identity thieves further use this leaked information for other financial gains and medical frauds.

Patient information is costly.

Leaked patient information is costly for everyone as it’s a hub of data sold to the dark web for money. Cyber security makes rules for protecting the data (patient and doctor's information).

Why do cybercriminals choose health care as their prime target?

Health care leaders are spending money on cyber security as new threats are uncovered every day due to which confidential patent data is compromised every day. The health care industry possesses information related to the patient that resists monetary and intelligence value to nation-state actors and cyber thieves. This industry database includes :

-Patients’ health information

-Employee, staff, and patient's financial information like bank account numbers and credit card details

-PII – personally-identifying information, including social security numbers.

- intellectual-property information related to innovation and medical research.

There are different reasons why cybercriminals choose healthcare as their prime target as follows:

Confidential patient information worth money to hackers
Medical equipment and devices are an easy target to attack
Data is remotely accessed by staff in the institutions
All the information in healthcare is open and sharable
Number of devices used in medical research and medical
Continuously used outdated technology
Smaller health care organizations are at risk
Shortage of budget to educate and train healthcare staff
Workers don’t want to combine the technology with their working module
Unsecured utilization of new technology by staff
Lack of training for proper utilization of equipment and devices

Cyber Attacks on the healthcare industry

The health care industry is facing a wide range of cyber security issues due to the impact of cyber-attacks, and some of the major cyber threats are as follows:-

Phishing scheme
Insider threats
Use of Internet-of-things (IoT) devices
Cloud-based environment
Use of remote connectivity and telemedicine

Ways of prevention of cyber-attack in the health care industry

Organizations use different methods to tackle the cyber-attacks and fight back

Mobile devices

Mobile devices are portable devices without which life can't be imagined; all the work is dependent on the phone, which has become an entry point for ransomware threats. It is easier for hackers to steal data from these devices as these act as open hosts to hackers because it is difficult to keep away sensitive information from the phone. Mobile should be protected by cyber security as these hold the major part of work.

Make a recovery plan and plan for a breach.

Hackers also update themselves with updation in sophisticated cyber security measures and technologies; therefore, a healthcare institute must prepare itself for a security breach. Health care institutes must have a comprehensive strategy, a counter plan, and a recovery mode of action to recover the attacked information.

Employee access should be limited.

The employees give a proper, mindful, and strategically planned system access to the employees. System access is controlled as hackers can misuse employees' credentials to pave their way to the organization. Employee database with their name and job role helps map their need to access the information. It allows the organization to decide how much access is necessary for which role. It can be explained by – a nurse's need to access the patient medical history, not the pharmaceutical bills. This mindful access provides overall security to the organization.

Proper training for workers

The Healthcare industry uses equipment and devices of new technology; therefore, healthcare staff must have proficiency in using the technology because an end-user is the easy target (weak link) in the system to the attacker. Employees can be attacked by phishing and spoofing attacks; they must know the consequences of these attacks and the procedure for reporting suspicious behavior. An educated, trained and aware employee can protect the network from attack by understanding their role in its security network. Cyber security training using techniques like phishing instances and real-life hacking is given to the employees to minimize data breaches.

Cyber security technologies must be tested and robust tried

To fight back against cyber-attacks, the health care industry uses well-developed cybersecurity technologies designed by cyber security experts. Technology must be updated and validated that provide a good product to minimize the bugs, risks of breaches, and malfunctions in the system.

Types and methods of threats are changing daily in the cyber industry. In the healthcare industry, an asset management system is set up to acquire an insight into overall medical devices on the network, and medical should develop partnerships with medical device makers. All medical devices are protected with cyber security by encrypting their data. Vulnerability assessment software is deployed on the devices conducted by the device itself. Software developers offer regular updates of health care apps which help apply patches to the vulnerabilities and block the opportunistic assaults.

Conclusion:

The health insurance portability and accountability act address the importance of cyber security in healthcare that protects the privacy and security of health information. It can be concluded that cyber security setup and protect health care institutions and medical data from outsiders' attacks, viral infections, targeted attacks, and negligence of cyber security by employees to steal medical records. Cyber security deals with all types of attacks, but the human factor is difficult to restrict. So to prevent this US government has launched HIPPA.

Before HIPPA, healthcare industry data has not counted as important information, so there was no requirement for organizations to protect health data. But after HIPPA's introduction in 1996, the health care industry moved to an electronic system that secures patients' electronic protected health information (ePHI), health devices, systems, technologies, and electronic health records.

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