Each day we hear about another cyber breach. It doesn’t matter whether it’s individuals or corporations and organizations, what size or what industry. Let’s take a look at how healthcare professionals and the every day data is not only at risk but how we can work on some preventative practices.
Where do Healthcare Errors & Omissions intersect with Cyber Liability? Trends would point to “ransomware” as seen with Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Admin functions and Systems were halted for two weeks until a deal between the cyber-criminals and the hospital were made. With an initial demand of $3.4M, the hospital was forced to agree to a $17,000 bitcoin ransom payment to regain access to their data.
Ransomware is the main cyber-threat for all industry segments, but hospital or other medical facility – in patient or ambulatory – exhibits larger threatening risk with the stakes higher than simply economic loss to the business. With systems being held hostage, the liability exposure during that two-week period included:
Here are some of the liability exposures that can take place during a two-week cyber threat episode:
• Full access to patient records cut off: Healthcare Professionals unable to access to patient data, documents and emails
• Diagnostic tests such as CT Scans unable to be carried out.
• Disabled access to records and diagnostic tests lead to claims for undiagnosed conditions or misdiagnosises.
• Critical Cases include patients transported to nearby medical facilities for treatment. This exposes patients to additional bodily injury in transit, loading and unloading into and out of ambulances.
MEDICAL DEVICES via HOSPITAL NETWORKS
Did you know that medical information could be worth 10 times as much as credit card numbers? Stealing such information is happening via hospital and healthcare provider networks and are being accessed by malware-infected medical devices.
Attackers infect medical devices with malware and then move on through hospital networks to gather confidential data.
Ultimately, more and more of technological advances, created to assist in monitoring and diagnosing health are also creating opportunities for cyber threats.
Luckily there are options out there for protecting your practice. There are both add-ons and stand alone products available depending upon the limits you’re looking for.