A new survey, commissioned by NordLocker, found that 56% of employees in the healthcare sector haven’t had cybersecurity training by their current employer. The same survey revealed that 76% of healthcare professionals handle confidential data at work.
“Since healthcare is among the top five industries most hit by ransomware, the organisations that don’t train their employees how to identify the potential risks and about the right measures to avoid them are on the brink of falling victim to cybercriminal activities,” commented Oliver Noble, a cybersecurity expert at NordLocker.
The survey revealed that 17% of employees in the healthcare sector don’t use any cybersecurity tools at work. Among those who do use protection on their digital devices, antivirus is the most popular software (60%) followed by a password manager (57%), a VPN (36%), and a file encryption tool (36%).
“With cyber racketeers going after the overwhelming amount of sensitive patient data healthcare service providers have access to, employers who don’t urge their employees to use the necessary cybersecurity tools, or even worse, don’t provide them, are putting their reputation at stake,” said Oliver Noble. “For example, unsecured IoT devices, such as printers, can provide a pathway to a hospital’s computer systems.”
When asked who should be responsible if they accidentally caused a data breach in their workplace, the majority of healthcare workers answered with “both the employer and the employee” (47%). However, one in five respondents (21%) would solely blame their company if they were involved in a data breach.
“With the human element being one of the weakest links in an organisation’s cybersecurity and hackers looking for vulnerabilities to exploit, it’s easy to see why many employees believe their employer should ensure appropriate means to be able to withstand threats,” Noble said.
NordLocker, an encrypted cloud service provider, advised that the following cybersecurity practices should be considered by healthcare providers:
- Make sure employees use strong and unique passwords to connect to systems, or preferably implement multi-factor authentication.
- Secure email by training staff to identify signs of phishing, especially when an email contains attachments and links.
- Implement and enforce periodic data backup and restoration processes. An encrypted cloud might be the most secure solution for this.
- Adopt zero-trust network access, meaning that every access request to digital resources by a member of staff should be granted only after their identity has been appropriately verified.
- Encrypt medical files to avoid data leaks in ransomware. Even if encrypted files are stolen from computers, hackers won’t be able to access their content and threaten providers with exposing the data publicly.
