Cyber threat intelligence should be a no-brainer for health systems.
The technique consists of information sharing in order to bolster an organization’s security posture and, what’s more, the barrier to entry is low and it can yield a high return on investment.
Yet In healthcare, CTI sharing benefits have not been fully realized, according to Denise Anderson, president of the National Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center in Ormond Beach, Florida.
“A little over five years ago we weren’t even pairing up the word cybersecurity with healthcare,” she said. “Now with the number of growing cyber threats and attacks against healthcare entities, the healthcare community has begun to take cybersecurity seriously.”
CTI includes sharing actionable threat intelligence – such as bad IP addresses, URLs, and file hashes – with trusted partners to create a powerful defensive web that transforms one organization’s detection into protection for others.
As such, CTI enables a proactive cyber defense, in which an organization can anticipate and thwart cyber adversaries before they occur, instead of a reactive defense that responds to attacks after they happen.
While frameworks and basic compliance strategies are good tools to start with, “they do not equal security and do not stop cyberattacks,” she said.
Awareness of the problem has risen due to increased coverage of egregious incidents in the media, as well as local experiences with ransomware or malware, Anderson said. And while not on a par with the financial services industry, she said some large healthcare organizations have grown increasingly sophisticated.
“But many smaller to mid-sized entities are still struggling to understand and address this growing problem and have limited resources to put toward it,” Anderson said.
Anderson will discuss CTI during the HIMSS17 session, “The Mechanics of Cyber Threat Information Sharing,” on Thursday, Feb. 23, at 10:30 a.m. in Hall F4.
HIMSS17 runs from Feb. 19-23, 2017 at the Orange County Convention Center.
This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.
