Achieve Business and Clinical Resiliency in Times of Change

Follow along with our blog series #HealthcareNow and #PublicSectorNow, where we’ll address healthcare innovation around the world and how to maintain business continuity in today’s health climate. 

Change. It’s constantly redefining the healthcare landscape, whether triggered by technology innovations, cultural shifts, or world events.   

Healthcare organizations understand this and plan for it, putting continuity and recovery plans in place to help them maintain normal operations as much as possible in times of change. 

However, with the recent pandemic many healthcare organizations were faced with changes so great and so fast, there was no “normal” to return to. 

The industry is quickly changing, and healthcare organizations are pivoting their services and work environments to be more flexible and resilient. 

According to this recent PwC Pulse Survey, 90% of healthcare executives are prioritizing changing workplace safety measures and requirements as their employees transition back into the clinical space. 67% plan to make remote work a permanent option for roles that allow it, and 70% are actively working to improve the remote work experience.  

Healthcare organizations are managing the acceleration of existing trends such as overnight increases in remote workforce, increased security concerns and exponential growth in telehealth and virtual care.   

Couple that with the appearance of new dynamics such as prioritization of worker safety and wellness in the care facility, patient consumerism, shifts in care delivery sites and disruption of business and patient-care models, and organizations have a lot to consider when it comes to balancing acceleration and disruption to become future ready.  

With these massive shifts in prioritizes, we believe it’s time to look beyond “normal” or even the “new normal” and embrace the ever-changing reality of our future with new levels of resilience. Not to just recover and adjust in the face of change, but to thrive.    

This is where Cisco makes a difference. You need secure, healthcare solutions designed and built for change at scale across your organization.  

Cisco Business and Clinical Resiliency Solutions help provide a safer work environment for your clinicians and staff and a trusted experience for your patients, while maintaining continuity of care.   

With unmatched healthcare expertise that spans networking, security, cloud, data center and collaboration, Cisco and our ecosystem of partners can deliver a complete healthcare solution that empowers your workforce to triage and care for patients remotely and allows administrative staff to work from home.  

We’d love to hear what you think. Comment below and stay tuned for the next blog in our #HealthcareNow series. 

Securing Internet-Connected Devices in the New Era of Healthcare

The proliferation of medical and internet-connected devices in healthcare brings both clinical benefits and security risks. Just think of the volume of healthcare data being transferred and stored every day — data from IoT and connected medical devices, electronic health records (EHRs), clinical workstations, and smart hospital applications for patients, clinicians, researchers, and administrators.

All of this data requires secure and segmented networks to better protect medical devices, guest wireless devices, clinician devices and more from cybersecurity threats.

As part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’re focusing on what’s at stake when it comes to securing internet-connected devices in healthcare and how you can create an end-to-end security strategy to help address patient privacy requirements, improve threat detection, reduce management complexity and ultimately lower the risks associated with medical and IoT devices.

Why do my internet-connected devices need to be secure?

With the number of connected devices on healthcare networks rising, and more devices requiring network connectivity, there’s never been a more critical time to consider your medical device and IoT security strategy.

Did you know that 63% of healthcare organizations experienced a security incident related to unmanaged and IoT devices in the past two years?¹

The average number of connected medical devices per hospital room is 15-20, and each of those medical devices have, on average, 6.2 vulnerabilities.²

Legacy medical devices can increase the threat surface as well. Sixty percent (60%) of medical devices are at end-of-life stage, with no patches or upgrades available. And the average age of medical devices being used by hospitals and healthcare organizations is 20+ years, making them significant targets for hackers.²

Add mobility to the mix, and you have even more devices to secure. 4 in 5 clinicians use smartphones each day³, and 71% of clinicians said their hospital allows BYOD use.⁴

So, what’s at stake?

Above all, patient safety continues to be the greatest concern when it comes to the security of internet-connected devices.

In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration recalled 465,000 pacemakers after the discovery of security vulnerabilities that could potentially put patients’ lives at risk.⁵

Recently, a ransomware attack on a German hospital may become the first ever to result in death.⁶ After the emergency clinic’s IT network was attacked, a 78-year-old woman was redirected to a care facility more than 20 miles away, resulting in delayed care that ultimately caused her passing.

When critical clinical devices are hacked, it can become a matter of life and death, thus emphasizing the importance of a strong security strategy.

What can you do to protect your patients and internet-connected devices?  

To protect patient data and secure your networks, users, endpoints, cloud edge and applications, you need a strong security strategy that includes the following:

• Ability to identify all endpoints on the network, categorize each to a security posture, and create profiles and policies by device type and vendor
• Quickly identify, isolate, and remediate cyber attacks
• Control access to patient data at the device, location, and user level to minimize risk
• Analytics and clinical informed alerts that enable IT to minimize security risks to the entire network while troubleshooting a known issue in an isolated segment

With Cisco Secure, and the Cisco SecureX platform, you can improve patient safety, automate medical and IoT device tracking and inventory, and reduce the risk associated with internet-connected devices within your healthcare facility.

Learn more about the healthcare security portfolio

Sources:

1. Armis, Medical and IOT Device Security for Healthcare, 2019​
2. Cybersecurity Magazine, Patient Insecurity: Explosion Of The Internet Of Medical Things​
3. Beckers Health  IT, 14 Statistics on Clinicians and Mobile Device Usage​
4. BYOD use is on the rise, and hospital policies need to be robust, Healthcare Dive, April 2018
5. 465,000 Pacemakers Recalled on Hacking Fears, Fortune
6. Ransomware attack on a hospital may be first ever to cause a death, Fortune

The post Securing Internet-Connected Devices in the New Era of Healthcare appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Cisco Webex Teams Earns HITRUST Certification

Follow along with our new blog series #HealthcareNow and #PublicSectorNow, where we’ll addresses healthcare innovation around the world and how to maintain business continuity in today’s health climate. 

As virtual healthcare is adopted at a greater velocity and scale than ever before, there’s never been a more critical time to talk about how we keep our customers’ data safe.

In healthcare, the stakes are high when it comes to privacy and security. The average cost of a healthcare record data breach is $429, which is more than double the cost of any other industry record breach. In the United States, the average total cost of a data breach for healthcare providers is $6.45 million.¹

At Cisco, we take our customers’ data security seriously and develop world-class collaboration solutions that are simple, scalable and designed to meet your compliance needs.

Achieving HITRUST CSF Certification

We’re thrilled to announce that Webex Teams, Webex Control Hub and Webex API have achieved HITRUST CSF Certification, the world’s most widely adopted security framework in the healthcare industry.

The HITRUST CSF Certification combines best in class standards from HIPAA, NIST and COBIT and helps healthcare organizations address security challenges through a comprehensive and flexible framework of prescriptive and scalable security controls.

Achieving this certification status places Cisco Webex into an elite group of organizations worldwide who have received this recognition, and further validates Cisco’s commitment to keeping data safe and confidential.

“HITRUST helps organizations ensure that the highest standards of information protection requirements are met when sensitive data is accessed or stored,” stated Jeremy Huval, Chief Compliance Officer, HITRUST. “Cisco can be recognized as an organization that can be counted on for keeping information safe.”

Impact on Your Healthcare Organization 

Privacy and security are paramount for your healthcare organization. As collaboration technologies continue to be widely adopted for virtual care, Cisco is dedicated to securely connecting patients, clinicians and care teams.

Learn more about how we protect your healthcare data, and read more about our HITRUST CSF certification.

We’d love to hear what you think. Comment below and stay tuned for the next blog in our #HealthcareNow series.

1. Ponemon 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report

The post Cisco Webex Teams Earns HITRUST Certification appeared first on Cisco Blogs.