Cybersecurity spending for healthcare protection will reach $10 billion globally by 2020, just under 10 percent of total spend on critical infrastructure security, said ABI Research.
On the one hand, financial and defense sectors are coping whereas the healthcare industry is drowning. The delivery of care is chief priority for care providers and business associates.
Healthcare industry is under pressure to reduce the growing costs of healthcare due to growing number of patients worldwide, to keep up with data protection requirements and to find a way to modernize and cut costs through the adoption of new technologies.
According to Allied Business Intelligence (ABI), the healthcare security is not prepared for the new cyberage. The malicious online agents are constantly attacking the hospitals, clinics, trusts and insurers.
Healthcare providers are finding it difficult to cope with medical identity theft and fraud as they are on the rise, with the past two years seeing hundreds of instances of data breaches leaking millions of personal records. Healthcare industry spends very little on cybersecurity, comparatively to other regulated critical industries
Security issues the healthcare sector is looking to address are the convergence to digital, the implementation of secure cloud solutions and protection of data as it flows through mobile healthcare applications.
Models can be adapted from the financial service sector and could serve to build solutions for healthcare providers.
A few startups such as TrueVault and FireHost are making waves in this area. Managed services and cloud solutions from companies such as NetFortis and ID experts also provide secure solutions for those ready to make the third party leap.
Awareness on the issues of risk management and fraud prevention is growing, with the support of growth management firms like Bluewater International or collaborative industry bodies such as Medical Identity fraud Alliance.
