Enhancing Cybersecurity in Healthcare: Strategies for Resilience and Protection (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Neil Clausen, Regional CISO at MIMECAST. On today's episode of Cybersecurity Bytes, we'll be talking about how to keep healthcare organizations more secure. Although the steps taken to prepare for and defend against cybersecurity attacks are similar across industries, the results of a successful attack can vary greatly. The impact of a security breach on healthcare organizations can be much more devastating, going far beyond monetary loss and downtime. The last few years have shown us just how much we rely on these healthcare institutions to provide critical patient care and services when it's needed most, and how stretched those resources are. Attackers take advantage of this every day. It's not enough to just have the right technical controls in place. Your ecosystem of controls must be well-managed and coordinated, similar to how a team of doctors and specialists will collaborate to provide you with the best possible care. Those scenarios require a mindful blend of people, process, and technology to manage and mitigate threats. With that in mind, here are a few things that can help improve your resiliency to cyber attacks, which can disrupt your organization and cause serious impacts to your customers and users. First, get the basics right. Select and implement solutions which prevent the most common types of attacks you face. This includes strong email hygiene and effective endpoint protection. Raise awareness with your end users by training them on those common attacks, how to recognize them, and how to report issues to security teams. Identify your most critical systems and data, and engage with your internal teams and trusted partners to work through the most likely or impactful failure scenarios, events which cause unacceptable negative outcomes. Next, seek to change the future in your favor. Turn individual knowledge to institutional knowledge by taking a defense-in-depth approach to the scenarios that you have or may encounter. The key here is that an incident may be a surprise, but your response shouldn't be. Ensure your teams and trusted partners have playbooks and runbooks which are tested and improved upon consistently. You should train like you fight, and fight like you train. Finally, leverage your ecosystem of controls, of smart and well-trained staff, and of clear policies and procedures to make your security program greater than the sum of its parts. Invest in solutions which integrate well into that ecosystem, bolstering each other to achieve the outcomes that you and your stakeholders expect.